


Mean World, Cold Eye

by LoveSupreme



Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Flirting, Ghost-Stories, Gothic, History Lessons, M/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-02-03
Updated: 2017-06-22
Packaged: 2017-11-28 01:06:02
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 58
Words: 168,375
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/668510
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LoveSupreme/pseuds/LoveSupreme
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Erik is a journalist in a small town assigned to cover the paranormal investigation of a notoriously haunted house. Not that he believes in that kind of stuff. But Charles Xavier, host of the Discovery Channel's Ghost Trackers certainly does believe in that sort of stuff. In fact, he and his investigative team have rather devoted their lives to converting disbelievers such as Erik. But even these seasoned investigators may have to admit to biting off more than they can chew when the true colors of this house begin to show. Whether ghostly or man-made, no one can deny that this mean world has cast its cold eye on the Gone-Away House. </p><p>Semi-edited fill to synecdoche_and's xmenfirstkink prompt.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> After considering your feedback as well as my own innate laziness I have decided this: the AO3 Mean World, Cold Eye will follow the same plot as the kinkmeme version. I am not going to try to make it a better ghost story, or more in line with the original prompt, or less pompous or any of that Big Change stuff. I am going to make Darwin less of a dick, Raven less of a meddler, and the Love Plot less completely separate from the Ghost Plot. If, after all the chapters are posted, it is generally agreed that the Ghost Plot sucks, it should have adhered more closely to the prompt, or it’s too pompous, then I’ll take it down and put up the Kevin Shaw, Gone-Away House version. 
> 
> Honestly, there was very little chance of the Kevin Shaw ending being any better than the original ending, so I’m not too cut up about this (I say this, until everyone starts gagging and rolling their eyes at my ending, and then I’ll probably rue the day I put the Shaw-ending on the back-burner…) All I ask is that people bear with me and, much as I like concrit, please, keep it reasonably optimistic.

_Where does this mean world cast its cold eye?_

_Who’s left to suffer long without you?_

Erik stared at the assignment waiting for him on his desk and then looked around at the rest of the office, waiting for someone to give some kind of sign that it was a horrendous practical joke. Any second Janos would struggle to keep his giveaway grin under check, or Jennifer would give Haroum a conspiratorial glance without thinking. But there was nothing. Everyone was busy with their own affairs: Janos was hissing angry things at his boyfriend through his cellphone (adding to their already uncountable number of breakups, it seemed), Jennifer was obviously nursing a hangover at the coffee counter, Haroum was fiddling with the thermostat while Jennifer wasn’t looking.

Erik turned back to his assignment, this time trying to wrap his head around the fact that Emma was serious.

He had been working at the _Avalon Daily News_ under Emma Frost for the past seven years, and taking her seriously had never proved difficult before, but today, with this assignment, it was a painful stretch. Starting as a trainee journalist and then eventually taking over the Local Affairs segment, which mostly meant Local Gossip, he couldn’t say this was the best job for a journalist in the entire world, but until now it had seemed mostly okay. He tempered the dullness of the job with his own personal pieces that Emma either shot down immediately or grudgingly allowed, depending on his level of unprofessional vitriol. In addition to his weekly assignments and personal campaigns he was expected to cover any assignments she deemed him fit for. Most of the time Erik was able to do his job sanely if not contently, but at the moment he regressed, and railed against his decision not to apply for a serious traineeship with BBC or Reuters or something, travel the globe as a Serious Journalist, covering the war in Afganistan or political intrigue rather than Shauna Malwae’s new baby or _La Pieta’s_ run in with the food inspector.

As always though, this hardship didn’t push him to move to the City and take up a start-up job in the International Affairs Bureau like his father constantly suggested, but instead pushed him to vent his frustration on Emma, an exciting task but not an overly productive one.

He wouldn’t be able to get her to change his assignment, he knew: this story was absolutely going to get written, and more than written but obsessed over. And he rather suspected that he wouldn’t be able to get her to shove the job off on another reporter, even a freelance one: she wasn’t one to back down or change her mind. But he had an inkling that he could make this situation so uncomfortable for her that she quivered at the thought of making him a part of the media frenzy this article was going to start off. And that was enough for him.

Jumping to his feet, he stalked angrily to his editor’s office, ignoring any curious gazes that latched onto him, and threw her door open and then loudly closed behind him.

“ _What the fuck is this?”_ he shouted, liking the way it made her eyes narrow. She refused to wince at his tone, but she couldn’t help the narrowing. It was the only sign he was going to get that he was succeeding in making life annoying for her.

“You know damned well what it is. Now get back to work before I replace you, you ingrate,” she growled menacingly back at him, going back to her work, slashing whole paragraphs with her dreaded red pencil.

He glared carefully at her perfectly painted face, pale and austere, her stupid fucking white-blonde hair, strictly curled and flawless for it, even her expensively manicured nails, and took a deep breath to break her out of her complacency.

“You’re out of your fucking mind! It’s ridiculous! It’s beneath my journalistic integrity!” he accused, watching her eyes narrow with each thrust of his shouts.

“Your last article was about the Finest Swine Pageant last week!” she reminded shrilly, eyes flaming.

“Yes but pigs exist!” he rebutted, shaking the assignment at her wrathfully.

He was shocked when Emma actually rose to his ire, snapping down her pencil and lunging up to a daunting stand in her five-inch heels. Her color was rising now, coming out on her face in angry red splotches that let him know that, somehow, he’d gone above her ability for composure.

“Let me tell you something, sweetness,” she snarled at him. “For your readership this crass shit is as real as pig pageants, and for as long as that’s true you’ll fucking do as you’re fucking told, do you fucking understand me?!”

Shock dropped him into a nearby chair, staring widely as he tried to get his mouth back into action. Emma never took the bait. She was always coldly calm and collected, downright smug in the face of fury. And she never, _ever_ cursed.

In the silence his surprise afforded, Emma sighed heavily and collapsed back into her seat, rubbing her temples weakly. She didn’t apologize for her outburst, but she did explain herself, which was as much of an apology as she was capable of.

“This story, silly as you may find it, is important, Erik. I know you don’t think so, but as far as 90% of this town is concerned, the Ash Creek House is haunted as all hell.” Erik winced on her behalf even though Emma didn’t realize her mistake. No local called it the Ash Creek House—it was always the Gone-Away House. She continued without noticing, head practically in her hands. “Now we have Charles Xavier and the Discovery Channel showing an interest for _Ghost Trackers_. It’s not a show you watch, or that I watch for that matter, but it’s a serious television program to be played on national TV, and that’s big news for this town, and it’s our job to cover big news, ridiculous though it may be. If we don’t snap it up, _Moira MacTaggert_ will, and I refuse to be bested by that woman—again.”

Erik was surprised. This was as close as Emma had ever come to mentioning her rival at _The Sentinel’s_ snooping out a national news story right out from under her. It wasn’t every day a prostitution ring was uncovered in one’s town, and when that town was dowdy old Avalon the odds went even further far afield. Emma hadn’t shown her face in the office for nearly a week. Erik was fairly certain one could either be fired or shanked for saying “Hellfire Club” within her hearing.

So Erik knew not to say that, but he wasn’t sure what he should say, so he ended up grumbling a sort of uncomfortable, “Jeeze, Em,” while glancing wistfully at the door.

He’d come in here to make her uncomfortable enough to not want to put either of them through this again, but now that the tables were turned he was eager enough to make a wash of it and take his assignment with only some serious grumbling. Instead, the woman kept talking, and since this scenario had never happened to him before, he didn’t know what to do but sit and take it.

“If you had any idea the sort of underhanded, clever things I had to do to get us an inside track with this stupid ghost-hunting thing, you’d—“ Emma stopped herself, shaking her head almost wearily. “This is a big deal for us, Erik. The sort of thing that’s going to keep Moira playing catch-up with us for the next _six months_. While she’s sitting over there on Ashton guessing her way through article after article, quoting fucking press releases, we’re going to be running this show with facts, quotes, insider information.” She glared at him heatedly, icy blue eyes gleaming. “You _will_ put your personal feelings aside and give me the story I want. The story I deserve, Erik.”

Erik glowered at the arm of his chair, and Emma seemed to see this as a cue to go on.

“You are going to pick him up at his hotel tomorrow morning. You are going to take him to the House, you are going to watch everything he does, you are going to give this town the article it didn't know it was dying for. I want ominous. I want terrifying. I want to have to write a disclaimer on the front page warning people with heart conditions or weak constitutions against reading your article. Do I make myself very clear?”

Erik shifted his glare to the demanding woman instead, but she just smile serenely.

“I see that you do. Now, get out of here. And if you please me very much, I promise to give the story to Janos when the film crew comes to town.”

“No.”

Emma’s face, just lowering to get back to work, jerked back up to stare at him dangerously.

“Keeping me out of this mess when it hits the fan? That earns you me writing a decent story that doesn’t offend the town to the point where they come firebombing your door. An amazing story, the story that’s going to shove Moira in the dust for six months? That’s going to cost you.”

“Oh Erik,” the woman sighed, sitting back in her chair and eying him over steepled manicured fingers. “This must be why I’m so in love with you.”

“Must be,” he grinned back. It wasn’t the case that Emma was in any way in love with him, but he would admit that he was closer to her than he was to most women, and she was closer to him than she was to most mortals.

“All right, all right,” she beamed. “You’ll get your just desserts.”

 

* * *

 

 

Erik was in a pissy mood after work, even though he’d shirked ghost-duty all day long, preferring to look busy by starting an article of his own devising about malfeasance in the mayor’s office.

“Get a good night’s rest,” Emma demanded of him when he was putting on his slicker in order to sprint to his car through the torrential downpour outside. “I want you fresh-faced for the ghost-hunter tomorrow.”

Erik decided then and there to get blinding drunk that night. He called Mark, his friend and crush, to join him but the man was busy consoling his twin that night.

“She’s pre-tty pissed that Fross stole this story out from unner her. I think she might wan’ me t’rrest your boss. Or you. Or whoever it takes to steal the ghost-hunner back from ya.” By the hushed tones, Erik guessed Mark was hiding his call, possibly in the bathroom based on the slight reverberations of the man’s grassroots accent. If there was one thing Erik could change about Mark, besides his rampant heterosexuality, it was damnable accent. It wormed its way into _every_ local, a stark demarcation between the towner and tourist. It, along with his penchant for expensive suits, was the main reason even seasoned Avalonians sometimes took him for a visitor, despite the fact that his family had been living there for generations.

“Yeah well, take her advice. I’d rather be in your lockup all day than follow that dolt around for a full minute,” he sighed back over the phone as he scoped out acceptable Scotch at Liquor Supercenter. They had a 20 year old Glenkinchie but it was $200. He kept looking.

“I wouldn’ have time t’rrest you—Fross would kill ya.”

“I think I might prefer that too. I’ve got to pick him up at his fucking hotel at nine in the fucking morning and chauffeur him all around town or whatever he wants. It’s ridiculous.”

Mark’s tone took on a hushed, awed air. “So it’s really him? I mean, the lead guy? Charles Zavier? Not one-a the side-crew, I mean, but like _the main guy?!”_

Erik tensed uncomfortably in his dripping slicker. He’d had his fingers crossed for years that Mark would wake up and decide to at least try cock, and if this miracle came true just for Mark to waste it on some TV-hoaxer Erik was sure he’d go on a killing spree.

He pushed the ridiculousness aside and grabbed a bottle of Famous Grouse.

“Emma said his name was Xavier, so if that’s the main guy....”

“ _You don’t know?!”_

“Emma gave me an information packet but I haven’t opened it on principle and don’t plan to.”

“Well are you going to at least watch the show before you go out there with him?”

“Not likely. I’ve got Scotch Whiskey in my hand and _Poltergeist_ on my DVD shelf. I’d say I’ve got the night pretty much full up. Unless you were feeling like coming over, of course…”

“No thanks, Casanova. I got a sisser to talk down from murder, especially when she finds out they gave the gig ta _you_.”

“I can’t help it if she doesn’t like me.”

“The choke-hole may-a bin a bit much.”

“It was my first cat-fight, I didn’t know what I was doing.”

“Here’s a hint for the next time Moira and Fross get inta it: don’t put nobody in no choke-hole.”

“Duly noted.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just added this to the re-edited 1st chapter, so in case anyone missed it:
> 
> After considering your feedback as well as my own innate laziness I have decided this: the AO3 Mean World, Cold Eye will follow the same plot as the kinkmeme version. I am not going to try to make it a better ghost story, or more in line with the original prompt, or less pompous or any of that Big Change stuff. I am going to make Darwin less of a dick, Raven less of a meddler, and the Love Plot less completely separate from the Ghost Plot. If, after all the chapters are posted, it is generally agreed that the Ghost Plot sucks, it should have adhered more closely to the prompt, or it’s too pompous, then I’ll take it down and put up the Kevin Shaw, Gone-Away House version. 
> 
> Honestly, there was little chance of the Kevin Shaw ending being any better than the original ending, so I’m not too cut up about this (I say this, until everyone starts gagging and rolling their eyes at my ending, and then I’ll probably rue the day I put the Shaw ending on the back-burner…) All I ask is that people bear with me and, much as I like concrit, please, keep it reasonably optimistic.

The rain had cleared by the morning, and the news channel even insisted it would get up into the nineties, although based on the current chill and dark, bloated clouds, Erik didn’t see how that was at all possible. Hung over and miserable, he glared out of his living room window: his skinny driveway, his skinny duplex-neighbor wading through last night’s deluge to nab his floating morning paper. He was too pessimistic to trust that the day would get any better, and set out his thick rain jacket before turning off his TV more violently than was necessary to stalking back upstairs to take a very hot shower. Under the spray, he tried to shake the memories of a night full of weird dreams. The most vivid involved him following Zelda Rubenstein around the Gone-Away House (which he’d never actually seen in person so his mind filled it in with his childhood home) and getting stuck in a closet portal and instead of helping him get out Rubenstein/Xavier just called the producers and started cackling about ratings.

Even though there was no one to impress, he dressed with his usual care: slacks, dress shirt, waistcoat. There were exactly ten eligible gay men in Avalon and Erik had slept with exactly eight of them--he was saving the other two for special occasions, or until he couldn’t help it. It was tough, working with these kind of limited options, but he made do, staging runs up to the bars in the City every few months to wrangle a new bed partner or two. Erik wasn’t a prude when it came to these things, and he didn’t understand people’s sexual hangups any more than he understood their fascination with the so-called paranormal.

If they wanted to get tricked by charlatans like Charles Xavier it was up to them, and if they wanted boring Puritan sex lives then more power to them so long as they didn’t try to stand in the way of his sodomy and one-night stands.

He was just double-checking the battery on his tape-recorder and provisioning his satchel when Emma called.

“You better be on your way over there. The last thing I need is for Moira to snatch him up while you’re putzing around with your thumb up your ass,” she threatened.

“I thought we agreed not to discuss my sex-life,” he joked, but she wasn’t in the joking mood.

“Get over there before I turn _you_ into a ghost,” she growled, and hung up.

This rivalry must really be getting to her. Normally her threats were much more underhanded, certainly less hysterical.

Sighing with the weight of his own intense distaste for the situation his job had managed to get him into, he pulled on his jacket and drove off to meet his doom, hoping at every second that someone would crash into him and hospitalization would save him from Xavier’s stupidity as well as Emma’s wrath.

 

* * *

 

The Dew Drop Inn was built in the 80s and, as far as Erik knew, it had never been updated since then. The color scheme was a heavily faded orange and green. There was a lot of wood paneling. There were heavy polyester curtains everywhere. At the same time, anything that could be floral printed was floral printed.

The Inn was set up on an L base with two stories. Not knowing what room Xavier was in, and seeing as it was a little after nine, Erik parked and jogged into the lobby. There were a lot of locals milling around sauntering into or out of the restaurant at the other end of the lobby but Erik didn’t see any pasty ghost-hunter sitting around on the floral couches.

Anyone else in town would have probably known Xavier’s birthday and shoe size, but Erik realized he didn’t even know what the guy looked like and found that he didn’t really care. He walked up to the reception counter where Lucia was leaning her breasts toward him and popping her bubble gum loudly.

“Ain’ seen _you_ round inna while. You here fer brekfist?”

“I might stop in for a bit,” said Erik, glancing at the bustling diner, a heady scent of grease making his stomach grumble. It apparently wanted to be repaid for the abuse of Scotch and more Scotch last night. “I’m actually meeting someone here.”

“Ohhh,” Lucia drawled with a wide grin, gum popping between her teeth. “So iss our famous guess is got you sniffin’ round. Mose these people showin up hopin’ ta catch a glimse uh him. But I thot you dinnit believe in ghoss?”

“I don’t,” he replied darkly. “Is he around?”

“Ain’ seen ‘im. Muss still be in ‘is room, right?”

Erik rubbed his eyes. Must try to appear more fully awake. At least the idiot wouldn’t know he’d been late, then. Or maybe Moira had shown up bright and early and kidnapped him and Emma was at this very moment on her way to assassinate him for losing his story.

“What room is he in?” he asked in a miserable groan, and hardly waited for Lucia to tell him before he rushed back outside and up to the second story rooms.

There was no one hanging around outside Xavier’s room, and Erik listened outside the door a moment trying to decide if the man had already run off with another journalist. But he couldn’t really tell if he was hearing things from inside this room or a neighboring one and didn’t want to be caught out there just listening like a weirdo, so he knocked, awkwardly glancing back at where the sun was burning through all the low-level clouds. He wished he’d brought his sunglasses: it was starting to look like the weather boy had been right about today being a secret scorcher.

When Charles Xavier answered his door a second later Erik turned just in time for his brain to fizzle out trying to take it all in.

Although he had known of course that the chances of the man actually looking like Zelda Rubenstein had been meager, his subconscious had still rather gone along with it. He had been thinking of someone short, squat, and sporting a possible helium-influenced voice box, maybe some awkward facial hair thrown in there just for masculinity’s sake.

Instead he got small, compact and surprisingly attractive. And brushing his teeth. And half dressed.

A cursory look informed him of dark brown hair, swept back in lengthy half-curls from his expressive brow, electric blue eyes, and a dark, alluring mouth pursed around a lemon-yellow toothbrush. The rest of him earned more than a cursory glance. Xavier’s dress shirt was unbuttoned, untucked, the despicably thin wife-beater beneath it hid none of the contours of the man’s surprisingly well-developed chest and abs. His belt was undone around sturdy hips, and very provocative for it. Yet Erik couldn’t be sure his mind had given itself over completely to finding Xavier attractive until he saw the way the man was looking at him.

The brunet leaned into the door jamb, hand still holding the toothbrush in the pursed grip of deeply red lips, and absolutely _raked_ his eyes up Erik’s frame until he could feel it like a heavy touch. When he reached Erik’s eyes he didn’t shy away but beamed into his gaze, had a way of smiling even though his mouth was still demonstratively busy with his toothbrush.

It was the most lustful gaze Erik had ever encountered, and he made a habit of picking up men in sleazy gay dance clubs. He wasn’t sure if the desire that erupted and writhed violently in his gut was in response to the attractiveness of the man or the attractiveness of being lusted after so obviously, but, either way, he found it hard to stand firmly.

Xavier finally pulled his toothbrush away, smirking, and said “Room service, I hope?” in the kind of voice that shivered up to Erik’s brain through his spine rather than his ears.

Once it arrived at his brain it refused to make sense, though.

“Wha?” he gulped, a moment before his brain translated the statement.

Xavier swiped the pad of his thumb across the foam on his bottom lip and Erik couldn’t help but follow every movement of the process.

“Or maybe you’re someone from the _Sentinel_ , come to steal me away from the _Avalon Daily_? In which case, _please_ , consider me stolen.”

The glint in the man’s eyes hadn’t abated, but rather sparked anew as he took the opportunity to get another gander at Erik from heel to head. Erik forced himself to recover from his school-boy fumblings by sheer willpower and mental reminder that this was the same man who believed _Casper the Friendly Ghost_ was practically a documentary. He located the ability to scoff and grin back.

“It’s nice to know you’re such a steadfast friend. I’m Erik Lensherr from the ADN and I’ll be your babysitter for the day,” he greeted, extending a hand. The man took it readily, and Erik half-expected some sort of lewd caressing but the handshake was firm and respectable, if intensely electric.

“I’ve always had a thing for babysitters,” Xavier admitted, still grinning cheekily. “I’m Charles Xavier. It’s a _real_ pleasure to meet you.”

“I’ll meet you in the diner downstairs once you’re more...clothed. If someone of your evidently sub-par mental acuity can figure out buttons.”

He had just been moderately rude to a highly attractive and unfortunately stupid _young_ man (much younger than Erik had been imagining), so before he had to face any offense, he turned and took his leave, feeling with absolute certainty that Xavier was checking out his ass as he walked away.

"Maybe you could help me with them? And a few other things, too..." Xavier called after him. Erik pretended not to have heard. 


	3. Chapter 3

Erik was hungry, and nursing a gnawing hangover, so he ordered without Xavier, drinking his coffee with more anger than was necessary.

Fate loathed him.

It was the only explanation for someone as attractive as Xavier being as attracted to him as Xavier obviously was and yet being as stupid as Xavier had to be. Erik wasn’t exactly picky: there were only twenty-nine gay men in this entire town as far as he knew, and out of that he had deemed a full ten of them as appropriate to screw. He could find it in himself to sleep with men who acted more like women, men who were more interested in sports than sex, men who were terribly dull and men who were annoyingly superficial (unless they worked with him, sorry Janos).

But he would never find it in himself to sleep with an idiot, and Charles Xavier was unfortunately an idiot. What else could you call a grown man who believed in ghost stories--not just believed in them but believed in them enough to devote his life to _proving_ them? A man who tried to convert other people into believing in them, too?

Well, he’d interview the man, he thought hopefully on his second coffee. Maybe Xavier was only a television whore of a fraud rather than a true-believer. Maybe he’d simply seen an opening in this ghost nonsense and was milking it for all it was worth. He could sleep with a fraud, so long as he was a smart fraud. He wasn’t looking for a good person, just a good lay. If he managed to get a good story out of it at the same time, so be it. Shaw had pretty much told him he could say whatever he wanted in his article. If that meant an article about the ghost-hunting fraud of a nymphomaniac then he’d at least enjoy this writing stint.

Granny came up with his food, breaking him out of his reverie and wheezing out enough breath to talk to him. The woman was ancient and humongous—was seemingly too old and too big to be working like this, but the diner was buzzing, apparently to the point where even she was called into duty.

“You goin’ ghost-huntin’ with the TV guy?” she grunted, out of breath from the walk from the counter to his table. Erik frowned into her girth, which was substantial enough to block his view of the front door. Hell, it blocked his view of the front half of the restaurant.

“Yeah, it’s looking that way,” he grumbled unhappily, breaking the yolks of his eggs and breathing in the healing scent of grease and protein.

“I thot you dinnit believe in ghose stuff?”

“I don’t,” was his firm response.

“Your mama’ll be rollin’ in her grave,” Granny cackled and Erik grimaced at the crudeness of it but stooped to reply.

“Her and every other mother down there, I’m sure.”

Most of the children in town had been warned against the Gone-Away House since they could toddle. When double-dog-dares forced them onto the premises it was hard to say what they were more frightened of: ghosts or their mothers. Erik hadn’t even bothered to fool around with that. While his friends got a good whacking for their antics, Erik knew his mother wasn’t going to stop at a wooden spoon. He’d never found out if she just didn’t want him annoying the Lovegoods, the only family crazy enough to actually live in the Gone-Away House (although, the crass joke went, they’d soon Gone-Away themselves) or if she really believed something evil lurked in the house itself.

Regardless of her unexplained reasons, he’d never been tempted to defy her. But  _ghosts_ had certainly had nothing to do with his obedience.

Before Granny could offend him further, a chipper British voice was lilting, “Good morning, Granny! How is your day so far?”

Granny shifted her weight laboriously, revealing Xavier into view. The man had changed clothes, now wearing a pair of light gray summer slacks, matching suit jacket folded over his arm. Hanging it on the back of the chair across from Erik, he slipped into the seat gracefully. When he crossed his legs he did it one knee very precisely over the other, and Erik found it so erotic that it pissed him off even further, lust funneling into wrath.

If he was going to force himself to not sleep with this man, couldn’t the guy at least give him a break and not be so goddamned _attractive_?

“Yeah, good ‘nough,” Granny wheezed back.

“I started without you,” Erik interrupted. “Are you eating breakfast?”

“I think I shall,” Xavier nodded, folding his paper napkin over his lap. His hands were broad and careful and Erik wondered what they’d be like digging into his spine as he drove into that tight British body. He gulped down a hot mouthful of coffee and winced. This was getting out of hand and it hadn’t even started yet. “Do you have any suggestions?”

Erik turned to Granny, forcing himself to stop looking at the brunet across from him.

“Get him the special,” Erik told her, and she huffed a nod, waddled away.

The busboy brought the man water and the man ordered some tea, was confused when he wasn’t asked what kind he wanted. Erik explained that there was only one kind: Lipton. Xavier pulled a face that Erik forced him not to think of as adorable and ordered a coffee instead.

“You changed your clothes,” Erik pointed out when they were alone, mopping up yolk with his toast.

“You’re very astute,” Xavier grinned back at him with those shining blue eyes. Erik kept his own eyes on his meal; it was less likely to try to seduce him out of his standards. “Your news program assured me it was going to be sweltering today, so I thought tweed might be a tad much.”

“It doesn’t have anything with trying to get into my pants, then?” Erik mused. It was much easier to banter when he didn’t have to look at the man.

“Unfortunately not, although I do still have my sights rather set on it.”

“So you can seduce me into writing a glowing review of your work, I’m sure,” he sneered playfully. Teasing and playfulness, next to sarcasm, he’d found, were the best methods to get away with offending someone.

“So I can seduce you into having sex with me, really,” Xavier corrected and Erik sputtered a moment, had to glance up to see if he was being serious. The man was smiling, the light of it catching in his eyes; it was hard to tell.

“That’s a bit...straightforward,” he grumbled, fidgeting in his seat.

“Do you not like it? I could try to stop. I’m afraid I have a habit of thinking people prefer honesty more than they actually do.”

Erik frowned into his eggs, not sure if he wanted the man to stop or not. On the one hand it was awkwardly candid, but on the other it was a little flattering to have someone just come out and tell him they desired him. Refreshing, really, in a way Erik was surprised to find he sort of liked. He wasn’t sure he wanted to admit to liking it just yet, though. Much as he admired being able to analyze his pursuers acts in a clear light, he preferred to keep his own actions a bit more shadowy than that.

“Honestly,” Xavier continued, giving up on an answer. “I’ve never understood why people insist on being so cloak-and-dagger when it comes to sex. A left-over from the Puritans, I suppose. Thank god for alcohol or I suppose we’d never get over our natural priggishness.”

“I’m not priggish,” Erik balked. Never in his slutty, slutty life had anyone ever accused him of such.

“I didn’t say you were. Well, I did, but I more implied that everyone is a little priggish, until alcohol gives them excuses to be adventurous, normally. I suppose I’ve just gotten rather tired of the excuses and so I tend to skip them without realizing.”

“So you’re a slut without the additive of alcohol, is what you’re saying,” Erik accused teasingly.

“’Slut’ is just a term prudes use to make one feel guilty about having a sex-life,” Xavier laughed back dismissively.

His food finally came, which Erik was thankful for because it got them off the discussion of sex and its social mores. And the fact that Xavier was apparently only an idiot when it came to the supernatural. He wasn’t allowed to sleep with idiots, but what was his stance on half-idiots? Erik wasn’t sure.

Xavier tucked into his biscuits and gravy without complaint, despite the heft of calories and carbs and grease. Erik wondered if he was city-boy ghost-hunter or a country-boy ghost-hunter. If his bitterness had allowed him to look at that damned dossier he’d already know, and felt badly about being so unprepared. Last night coming to work woefully unlearned seemed passive-aggressively just. Now it left him nervous. Normally he was extremely professional when it came to interviews, did all his background work well ahead of time. Lacking that buttressing, especially against someone as verbally deft as Xavier, left him uneasy. This anxiety, along with his writhing lust, could only be hidden with further gruffness.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Part 1!

“Do you mind if we start?” Erik requested when their table was cleared, pulling out his tape recorder and notebook.

“Not at all. Did you want to do it here? Or in my room?”

Erik gave the man a chastising low-level glare, but Xavier only smiled easily back, as if he weren’t being purposefully suggestive. It was true that it was a bit loud in here, that everyone was glancing at them, looking as if the slightest opening would tempt them into rushing the brunet and requesting an autograph, but on the other hand Erik didn’t trust either of them to be in a hotel room alone together.

“Here’s just fine,” Erik assured witheringly. He pressed record and flipped to the correct page of his miniature notebook, reading his drunken shorthand of interview questions and trying not to blush.

“So, Charles Xavier, Ghost Tracker. How do you think that such nonsense gets a running TV show?”

He could feel Xavier looking at him carefully even though he kept his own eyes safely on his paper.

“I fear that I am misunderstanding you, perhaps,” the Brit suggested demurely.

Annoyed that the man could be so forthcoming when it came to talk about wanting to fuck him but suddenly turned into a shrinking violet when it came to defending his work, Erik pinned him with a glare.

“I _mean_ , you have a show on the Discovery Channel about running around chasing figments of the imagination. Doesn’t that at all embarrass you?”

Charles smiled, shrugged smoothly, but his face seemed suddenly calculating.

“ _Jersey Shore_ got through six seasons. So no, I’m not really embarrassed by my show at all.”

“There’s worse things you could watch, you’re saying.”

“It’s not what I’m attempting to say, but it’s a statement I would agree with.”

“But _Jersey Shore_ is a real-life event dealing with actual people in the actual world,” Erik pointed out.

Charles’ eyebrows quirked as if he were trying to find a difficult line of code in a mass of nonsense and Erik realized the brunet had amazingly expressive eyebrows. He turned back to his paper and tried hard to ignore the man on the other end of the table.

“I think perhaps I know what you’re driving at, but I would much prefer that you just ask outright.”

“Do you believe in ghosts?”

“Absolutely,” Charles agreed cheerfully. A glance showed that brow clearing of all confusion, the bright openness shining back. The man seemed to find himself on much firmer footing with this turn of the conversation.

Erik was disappointed that he was in fact dealing with an idiot and that he could sound so certain in his idiocy.

“I mean,” Charles continued. “After all the evidence I’ve gathered it would be a pretty big stretch to insist that they _don’t_ exist.”

Erik just stared. What the hell was he dealing with here? ‘Evidence’? How could you have evidence for something that didn’t exist?

“What do you mean, evidence?”

Charles’ eyes glinted suspiciously. “You haven’t actually seen my show, have you?” he accused.

Erik blushed, feeling like his teacher had just caught him without his homework. His embarrassment made him meaner than he otherwise might have been. “Well, _The Bachelorette_ was on and I’m only allowed to watch one piece of trash a week.”

Xavier didn’t rise to the bait, just continued to look at him like an interesting science project.

“I’m confused,” the Brit admitted. “Are you saying that you disapprove of my show, distrust my findings, and disavow my premises, all without ever actually having _seen_ the program?”

Glaring, Erik could feel his cheeks burning. But he still refused to be cowed by the weight of his own shame. He should _not_ be ashamed: this hot _charlatan_ should be ashamed.

“Do I need to read _Mein Kampf_ to know it’s anti-Semitic trash? Do I need to see _Transformers_ to know it’s a hyped-up fireworks show?”

“That’s not quite what we’re talking about here. In your analogy you have previous knowledge of _Mein Kampf_ and Michael Bay to know what to expect: you know the history of Adolf Hitler and I’m assuming have at least heard a review of Bay. I’m interested to know if you have a similar background in paranormal research?”

“How do you mean?”

“I mean: what is it, exactly, that you think I do?”

Erik thought about it for a moment, using a sip of water as an excuse to take a breath. This was becoming a lot more of a discussion than an actual interview. He tried to put it back on course.

“Why don’t you explain to our readers exactly what it _is_ you do?”

Charles smiled knowingly but allowed it.

 “All right. Well, when I first got into this line of work, we relied heavily on volunteer participation. By that I mean that average people suffering from what they imagined to be paranormal dissonance would call us and we’d use that opportunity to research their disturbances. So in those days we were simply going out into the normal populace’s homes looking for data. Some of the cases were extremely interesting; most were false-alarms. The problem was that these people of course wanted us to get _rid_ of their disturbances. Well that’s doable in false-alarms: replace old wiring, fix leaks, quiet infrasound—“

“What is infrasound?”

“Oh, well, it’s a low-level noise, usually between about 7 and 19 Hz, and it normally has strange, sort of other-worldly effects on the brain. Completely scientific, and easy enough to fix once you know where the sound is coming from. One house, up in Jonestown, had been haunted ever since they installed electric light. The power box they installed was making a pipe vibrate. It created about seventeen Hz. Once we replaced the pipe we never had another complaint about the place; really interesting stuff.”

“But you said that you _did_ believe in ghosts--this is just hocus-pocus.”

“Well, while the majority of our cases, both then and now, have perfectly normal explanations, some have paranormal ones. Those are the ones we really hunt for. The haunting down in Raleigh from season one, the Norfolk House from the season finale. Amazing findings...”

“What do you mean, findings? You said you had evidence?”

“Yes, precisely. Well, you’d be absolutely astounded at the amount of evidence there is for the paranormal and yet it’s still seen as outside the scope or interest of mainstream science. It really boggles the mind. I mean, we have temperature readings, electronic signatures, sometimes even _voice_ recordings, pictures, video! It’s really a bit like Galileo running to the church with a photograph from the Hubble space telescope and still getting laughed out. Sometimes it’s very disheartening, but now that we have the Discovery Channel as a venue it really feels like we’re finally starting to make some progress. Less crackpots knocking on our doors. More legitimate hauntings. We can really focus our energy now, and that’s certainly worth any…well…ahem.”

“You keep saying 'we',” Erik pointed out, letting Xavier off the hook for his awkward trailing off.

“Oh, yes, me and my team. I certainly couldn’t do all this work by myself! And I honestly don’t know where I’d be without their support.”

Erik wanted to ask about them, but he didn’t want to lose his original line of questioning. He’d have the whole rest of the day to ask about his team, what they did, and why they weren’t here driving the fool out to old houses and putting up with his sexual advances.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Part II!

“If ghosts did actually exist wouldn’t we have heard about by now?” Erik argued and Xavier actually looked energetically frustrated at that, sipping his water and putting it back a little too forcefully.

“That’s exactly what I’m trying to explain: we _have_ heard about it by now! I don’t think you have another scientific arena on Earth that has so much evidence behind it and yet is still excluded from the realm of legitimate study.”

“But I’m talking about actual evidence,” Erik argued. “Not stay-at-home moms who insist their refrigerator eats baby souls.”

“I don’t know another way to say this to you: we have more evidence of ghosts than we have of dark matter, of Alpha Centauri, of deep sea life! We have more evidence today to support the paranormal than Galileo did for heliocentricity in 1615!”

The man was really getting excitable, eyes shining, cheeks flushed a warm glowing pink. It was incredibly reminiscent of sex and the more attractive Xavier became the angrier Erik got. His natural dickishness took over.

“But it’s easy to come up with evidence when you’re the one making it all up,” Erik pressed on.

Charles looked about as if he had been slapped in the face. Erik thought for a moment he’d simply get up and walk out, straight to the Sentinel and turn himself over to Moira MacTaggert out of pure offense. But after a second he retorted with, “That is the most ridiculous sort of libelous trash I have had the misfortune to hear lately, Mr. Lensherr. I hope _you_ have evidence to support your estimation that I am a fraud and a quack.”

“If you have evidence that says that something impossible is _possible_ then what other option is there other than fraudulence and forgery?”

“How about the chance that we have simply mislabeled the paranormal as something impossible? I’ll give you an example; I’ll try to give you an example,” Charles assured, mind apparently racing. “Science doesn’t understand why we dream. Is the brain simply goofing off in its down time? Is it the mind’s way of half-heartedly processing all of the sensations still flooding it despite sleep: touch, taste, smell, et cetera? We simply don’t know. But would you say dreaming is _impossible_? Just because we don’t understand it?”

“No, I’d say there’s a _logical_ explanation!” Erik volleyed.

“All _I’m_ saying is that maybe the paranormal _is_ the logical explanation. Maybe it’s not all the old-wive’s tales we’ve been confusing it with. Sometimes _Grant_ is buried in Grant’s tomb.”

Erik started, head quirking in his confusion. “…I don’t follow you.”

“I mean, sometimes a thing is exactly what you think it is. There’s no trick question, no convoluted excuse--sometimes the answer is exactly what you’d think the answer would be.”

Erik gave them both a couple seconds to breathe before he moved on.

“How did you get into this--” he almost said ‘nonsense’, then decided his antagonism was getting out of hand. “--this line of work?”

Charles relaxed back into his chair from where he’d tensed during their heated discussion.

“My father died when I was very young,” he said.

“And his ghost visited you?” Erik couldn’t resist snarking. Charles rolled his eyes but was grinning.

“No, that was the problem.” When he saw Erik didn’t understand he continued. “I would have loved for his ghost to visit me. My nanny or sister would always tell me ghost stories, mostly trying to scare me, of course. But I wasn’t scared. It made me hopeful. It made me think that what I had thought of as the end wasn’t really, it was just a movement into a different tenet of life, level two, however you want to describe it. And if only I could access that second plane, or it could access me, then I’d still have a father.”

“So you were junior ghost-hunter? Searching for your dad?”

“We prefer paranormal researcher, or investigator if you must.”

“Of course,” Erik replied facetiously. Charles glared at him slightly, reached over, and turned off the recorder.

“What about you?” he asked before Erik could balk fully.

“What _about_ me?”

“Didn’t you ever think about the afterlife when your mother died?”

Erik jolted in his chair, staring wildly.

“ _Who the fuck--_ ”

“You and Granny were talking about it when I walked in. She said that your mother would be rolling in her grave.”

Erik shifted uncomfortably, trying to relax his tight muscles and mostly failing.

“She died when I was fifteen. So I was a bit too old for ghost-stories at that point,” he said gruffly.

“I don’t mean ghosts. I mean, didn’t you ever wonder what had happened to her afterwards?”

“Nothing happened to her, she just died,” Erik growled, eyes flashing.

“You don’t believe in an afterlife at all?”

“ _No_.”

“Oh...well then we have rather a non-starter, don’t we?” the Brit laughed, the sound of it light and diffusing. “I mean honestly this whole time I’ve been arguing the tenet when we aren’t even agreed upon the precept!” Xavier laughed harder, completely jovial, like this conversation was a comedy show rather than an intense, aggravating discussion. “Really, it’s like arguing about steak when you don’t even believe in cows!”

Erik tried not to grin because he didn’t find any of this funny; it was purely the infectiousness of the laugh that was getting to him. He bit the inside of his mouth to keep it under control and stared at Xavier studiously as the man wiped his eyes with an actual handkerchief.

“You’re a strange fish, Charles Xavier,” he sighed at last, mind finding no collusion on the man. “And how someone as confusing as you ever got on TV is stranger still. Apparently a British accent and a cute face is all you need these days.”

Xavier controlled his laughter in order to just sit back and beam at him.

“You think I’m cute then, do you?”

Erik answered through an embarrassing amount of spluttering. “I meant objectively! _Not_ that I personally think that your face is...cute...”

The man let him off the hook, unpinning him from his electric gaze by glancing at his watch.

“Well,” the Brit sighed happily.  “Are we going to flirt all day or do you want to see a not-haunted house?”

“I’m not flirting with you!” Erik balked, fumbling for his wallet.

“Really? I guess my mind has a habit of considering heated discussions as foreplay.”

Erik took a long gulp of water. He was not going to survive this day.


	6. Chapter 6

“What is in this thing?” Erik huffed under the weight of the duffel bag Charles had tossed to him to stow in the trunk.

“Oh, that? It’s chock-a-bock full of condoms,” the man joked, hopping jovially into the passenger’s seat with his other bag. Erik just shook his head, rubbing his face. It took a full twenty minutes to drive to the Gone-Away House—twenty minutes alone with the man at close quarters. Once there they would be overseen by the House’s caretaker (a little old volunteer from the Historical Society whose history presentations Erik had slept through many a time in his childhood). He should be safe enough in her cock-shrinking presence. In the meantime, he found himself wishing he’d kept the bear mace Mark had given him. But he guessed that wouldn’t really work in an enclosed space anyway.

Sure enough the moment he was behind the wheel the brunet was rubbing up against his shoulder, pretending to fiddle with the radio. Erik pushed him off with a gruff “Stop it.” The other man laughed, but did sit back in his seat, making a show of behaving, hands obediently in his lap. Still, even with the won space, Charles’ presence wormed its way under his skin: the weight and mass of the brunet nearby, the smell of his cologne, light and clean, the sight of his pale, blunt fingers worrying the hem of his gray slacks. They looked soft, and Erik had an image of himself reaching over, putting his hand on the inside of Charles’ thigh, feeling the heat and texture there, hearing the man’s sigh, surprised but pleased, triumphant.

He gripped the steering wheel that much tighter, the throb in his skull spiking to a sharp pain as he grit his teeth.

“So what do you know about the Gone-Away House?” he questioned gruffly, trying to keep his eyes solely on the road. His will-power didn’t hold out long: as Charles turned in his seat he found he had to look, taking in a glimpse of the man’s furrowed brows and shining, pale eyes. He turned away again, realizing how dry his mouth was, wishing he’d brought some water along.

“Wait, I thought we were going to the Ash Creek House? How many haunted houses do you people have?”

“None,” Erik grinned back and when he went to give the man a sarcastic glance he saw that Charles was giving him one back and had to bite down on a traitorous laugh. “Only tourists call it the Ash Creek House.”

“But I am a tourist,” Charles reminded, smile evident even in his voice.

“Alright,” he agreed. “Then I’ll give you the whole 'Tourist Spiel':-”

“No thank you,” Charles cut him off with, stoppering the words in his throat before he could even amass the proper sinister anticipation that his boy scout leader had always taught him to imbibe it with.

“What do you mean, ‘no thank you’?” he balked. “Do you want to hear about the Gone-Away House or not?”

“Not,” Charles insisted stubbornly. “I want to go in completely unbiased.”

“You’re not unbiased: you believe in ghosts and think the place is haunted. That’s biased.”

“Yes but if I have the history first I might subconsciously confer meaning to whatever evidence I obtain. My job is to get these phenomena on tape, not muddle about with motives. Backstory tends to prime one for a certain translation of data. Given an element of ambiguity, your mind filters the confusion through preconceived notions: the human brain gives you what it thinks you’re looking for.”

“Like ghosts.”

“Of course! If you think I disagree that researchers have gotten carried away with their own beliefs, you’re mad. It’s why all our data has to be verifiable. Nothing is swayed by over sentimentality or cynicism. Our photos, videos, audio tracks, even our electric and temperature readings, go through third-party interpreters.”

“You make it sounds like a viable science.”

“For me and my audience it is. I can’t help what idiots like you think.”

Erik balked violently. “ _Me_ , an idiot!”

“Unfortunately,” Charles sighed sadly. “If it makes you feel better I’ve never met a more attractive idiot.”

“ _I’m_ not an idiot: _you’re_ an idiot,” Erik growled back, strangling the steering wheel.

Charles just shrugged and continued.

“Really, what would you call it when one man simply collects data and is drawn to the conclusion that the data demands, whereas the other man refutes hard evidence in favor of churlish prejudice?”

“So in this debate you’re the hard-nosed scientist and I’m what? The hysterical extremist?”

“Yes, precisely,” Charles agreed with an energetic smile.

“Mainstream science has my back. _You’re_ the fringeline. That means I’m right and _you’re_ the idiot.”

“If that were true then every minority on earth would be conquerable on the intellectual plane purely for lack of numbers.”

“I don’t normally take the part of the majority in the oppression of the minority, but in your case I’m going to make an exception. Anything so long as it means that _I_ am the discerning one here and _you_ are the simpleton.”

Charles scowled at him and then suddenly grinned. “Fine. You think I’m an idiot and I think you’re an idiot. Our dissimilar beliefs cancel each other out and thus neither of us is an idiot.”

Erik was about to burst that quaint bubble, but then stopped himself.

If he allowed this philosophical precept then Charles would not technically be an idiot. Erik was allowed to sleep with idiots who weren’t technically idiots, he was _absolutely_ sure.

He grinned wide across the console at the smaller man and Charles fidgeted slightly under his gaze, smiling back a little nervously.

“What is it?”

“Nothing. I just hope you can contort your body as well as you do your mind.”

 

* * *

 

The car ride that had seemed so sinister at first was very pleasant now that he didn’t have to rail against Charles being too dense to sleep with. The man told him about his background (born in Westchester, raised in Keswick, studied at Oxford until he realized all he wanted to study was paranormal phenomena and not Microbiology and he dropped out) and briefly about his plans for the house: “We’ll start collecting data today and then when my team arrives tomorrow we’ll start processing it all, see what we’ve got.”

“What then?”

“Well, if we think it’s going to be worth our while we’ll drop a line to our production manager and he’ll pass the word up and they’ll slot it for the new season.”

“Which means I’ll be covering this circus till next year,” Erik groaned.

“Did you always want to write for the ADN?” Charles questioned, grinning at him.

Erik tried not to writhe uncomfortably. Anti-social as he was, he wasn’t used to giving people much of an idea of himself beyond his surface brusqueness. The perk of only having one-night stands was that few questions beyond “Top or bottom?” ever came up.  “Not quite. I had bigger sights in mind when I went to college actually: _Reuters_ or the _New York Times_ or something even more exotic: war journalism, travelling the world on a publication circuit, something glamorous along those lines. My dad still dreams of the day, I’m sure. His son: the next Seymour Hersh. The biggest thing since Stephen Ambrose. You get it.”

“So what happened?”

Erik shrugged.

“I don’t know.” He did know, but it was too awkward to say out loud, especially to someone he now planned on sleeping with.

Charles didn’t let it go, though, sidling close to him and jabbing him in a rib, making him flinch slightly.

“What was it?”

“Nothing!”

“None of that now, Mr. Lensherr. I’ve made a life of discovering the secrets of the other side of the veil. Don’t think I won’t work just as hard to uncover yours.”

“They’re not that interesting, trust me,” Erik huffed.

“Good, then you shouldn’t mind telling me.”

Erik glared at the smaller man but he just smiled back easily, with an eager gleam in his eye that told Erik the more stubbornly he withheld the more determinedly Charles would pursue. It was flattering, actually, although he knew he shouldn’t put any stock into Xavier’s rampant curiosity. Erik was just as curious, but that didn’t always mean he had a personal interest in what he was investigating, outside of the fun of a new puzzle.

Rolling his eyes, he gave in. “Fine. I interned at the Associated Press in college and, really, it was just never my cup of tea. You may not be able to tell, but I have a very wrathful personality, and writing about the awful things that happen in this world, in depth and unflinchingly, would undoubtedly make me want to turn to a life of vigilante-ism. As a full-time job I’d probably last six months before I had to take to the open road blotting out where this mean world casts its cold eye.”

 “What is that? I’ve heard that before,” Charles mused, sitting back, appeased.

“It’s a saying, I think. My mother used to say it, when something really awful happened: murder, rape, whatever. ‘Where does this mean world cast its cold eye?’”

“I don’t suppose there’s a lot of that in Avalon. I mean, it seems a very gentle town.” Charles grazed his fingertips over the window as he spoke, over the passing bucolic scene: rolling farms and sun-lit trees. Erik just looked at his small fingers silhouetted against the pane and imagined running his own sharp fingertips over them. And he could, he smiled to himself. Charles was no longer off-limits, and if, at day’d end, the Brit invited him back to the hotel room, he thought he’d take him up on it. In the meantime, he made mental note of everything he was going to do to the man.

“Maybe not gentle. Mostly harmless, let’s say. And I know it’s cowardly, hiding away here, writing about bake sales and ghost hunters, but the alternative is to be pitiless journalist by day and Batman by night, and I’m not a billionaire, so that would be difficult for me.”

Charles grinned at him. “You’re going to make an interesting ghost one day. Paranormal investigators of the future are going to be in for quite a show,” he mused.


	7. Chapter 7

The Gone-Away House was smaller, more sedate than Erik had expected based on pictures and eye-witness testimony. There was a long gravel driveway that shifted to a stop parallel with the front of the house, and a dirt path that ran from the gravel up to the front steps (or would if it weren't under inches of rain water at the moment). A wide porch protected the shaded front of the house, with a swing bench hanging sideways on the far right. In peeling gray and white, the place didn’t look any more haunted than half a dozen other rundown farm-houses in Avalon, and Erik found himself quietly disappointed.

“How are we going to get across?” Charles questioned, coming around to his side of the car to inspect the miniature lake blocking their entrance. Erik simply went to his trunk and got out his rubber boots. Charles looked on jealously, bag slung over one shoulder. Damn but the man looked good in a suit.

“You walk across and toss the boots back to me,” the Brit suggested, motioning the forty feet or so to the front door.

“You’re crazy! What if they don’t make it? Who’s going to wade out after them?”

“Well I’m not _swimming_ across.”

“I’ll carry you,” Erik suggested. Charles actually _scowled_ at him.

“No thanks, I’ll walk around.”

But Erik didn’t see how that was going to work: the yard was hemmed in on the left by Ash Creek and on the right by enough shrubs and brambles that it would take the rest of the day to hack a trail through it.

“Okay, _I’ll_ go investigate the house and you can sit in the car until the lake evaporates. How does that sound?” Erik asked, chucking his own shoes into the trunk and putting on the rubber ones, grunting under the weight of Charles’ duffel bag.

“I’ll go investigate, you drive back to town and buy yourself another pair of Wellies.”

Erik squinted at the man through the heavy sunlight.

“Is this like a Napoleon complex?” he asked. “There’s nothing embarrassing about being tiny enough for a real man to carry you.”

“I’m five-seven, you bitch!”

“Are we doing this or what?”

Charles sulked prettily, but folded.

“Fine, but I’m going piggyback. Strap that to your chest and I’ll carry this bag.”

Erik shook his head. “It’s slick. I want a hand free in case I have to catch myself. It’d better be fireman’s carry.”

It was another few minutes convincing Charles, but he won in the end by threatening to tell him all about the House in a voice too loud to block out, thus biasing the little scientist against his will.

“If Mrs. Hudson sees this I’m going to murder her and blame it on the house,” the Brit threatened angrily as Erik put the duffel bag and his own satchel over his shoulder. Next up: sexy ghost hunter.

Erik just smirked in the face of his quaint threats and bent down, slipping a shoulder into Charles’ hip and wrapping an arm around his solid thigh, taut and muscular and alluring.

Muttering about the indignity of the situation, Charles leaned across his shoulders, allowing Erik to catch his wrist, and he stood fluidly, hoisting the man up.

Charles’ wrist was thinner than he was expecting; he could catch the full circle of it and still clutch the fabric of his knee, holding them together like two ends of a scarf in his fist. The heat of the man’s body across the breadth of his shoulders, the inside of the man’s thigh pressed into his chest, was dizzying for a moment and Erik forced himself to focus on his steps, his free hand gripping the man behind the knee, slacks just as silky soft as he was expecting. Once he was recovered though, he went ahead and got cheeky, sliding his hand up the back of Charles’ thigh, thrilled at the feel of the man’s abs tightening against his shoulders as he hitched his breath.

“You perv,” the Brit complained, a little breathless. “You’re the most sexual-harassing of all firemen.”

“I guess why they never let me on the squad,” Erik sighed sadly.

“Walk. Faster,” Charles demanded through grit teeth. Erik ignored him, keeping his steps careful and steady. It really was slick here, the yard mostly mud and slimy grass, and while Charles would forgive him for groping him he didn’t think he’d get equal absolution for dropping him in the mud.

Safely across, Erik twisted, setting the man on his feet but accepting one last caress as he let loose of his thigh. Charles folded his arms over his chest and glared at him with cool blue eyes, face flushed with anger or embarrassment or both. Erik wondered how far down that coloring went.

“If I read about this in your paper I’m running straight to the _Sentinel_ and telling them how you forced yourself on me. And how small your cock was. Understood?”

“They’d never believe you. My cock is a legend in this town. We’re thinking of having a statue made.”

“To scale, in the _matchstick museum_?” Charles mocked.

“Are you going to flirt with me all day or are you going to show me some ghosts? C’mon--get moving.”

* * *

 

“Look,” Charles demanded, motioning to the door of the House, a plain white affair with dusty curtains in the four-square window. There was a sticky note attached to a pane.

 _Sorry. --Mrs. H,_ it said. That was it.

“Sorry for what?” Erik wondered aloud, shucking his boots off on the patio and continuing on in his thin trouser socks.

“The key is in the lock,” Charles pointed out. Erik looked, confused. Sure enough a single bit of metal was sticking out from the door knob. “I guess she’s not coming.”

“You mean staying,” Erik corrected, because there caretaker had obviously been there not long ago. They were only supposed to meet her at eleven, after all, or that’s what Charles had claimed.

The Brit checked his watch and said in a huff, “That’s a bit rude! We’re only twenty minutes late. You’d think she could give us some leeway.” Especially since ten minutes of that had probably been spent traversing the front yard.

“Are you sure you got the time right?” Erik questioned. Charles didn’t even dignify that with a response, turning the key into the lock and shoving through the stiff door. Erik followed more hesitantly.

There _better_ not be an afterlife because if there was then his mother was going to kill him when he got there.

“May I have my bag please?” Charles requested, and Erik handed the heavy bag over gladly.

“I’m going to set up my equipment. Will you make yourself useful and check to make sure there aren’t any windows open? I don’t want to get any false readings due to a draft. Or did you want to come with me to set up?”

“What does setting up entail?”

Charles squatted down and disemboweled the rugged duffel bag, excising one of many thick black squares of plastic with a digital screen. “I stick these in various places and they record the temperature and electronic anomalies.”

“Why electronic?”

“There’s a link with electro-magnetic surges coinciding with supernatural presences. We’re not sure if it indicates an interruption like with infrasound or if the energy signatures are produced by the ghosts themselves as of yet, but our research is working on that question. Some people think that complex electromagnetic field shifts at low level can even cause full-out hallucinations, as if things weren’t complicated enough already.”

“You’re going to walk around sticking things to walls, is what you’re telling me?” He took the man’s pout as a ‘yes’ and continued, “Thanks but I think I’ll pass. Call me when you start pulling out the _interesting_ ghost-hunting techniques, like Ouija boards or exorcisms. In the meantime I’ll be shutting windows.”

“I told you, I’m not concerned with chatting up ghosts, only with eliciting quantifiable results. Ouija boards are not scientifically verifiable.”

“Please tell me you’re not this esoteric in bed.”

Charles glared at him, but Erik thought he detected a hint of amusement there still.

“Get to work, you louse. And close the doors behind you; I like to have everything shut so I can keep track of anything getting opened.”

“Ghosts open doors? Can’t they just...you know...walk through them?”

“Maybe it makes them feel more normal to do it the old-fashioned way?” Charles suggested, and took his bags up the stairs on their right. Erik did not attempt to stop himself from checking out the man's ass. 


	8. Chapter 8

The inside of the Gone-Away House looked a lot like his grandma’s, now that he saw it.

Well, they had their similarities. The dark, dusty floral print couches, the ancient TV complete with rabbit ear antennae, the bookcase boasting more knicknacks than books... He couldn't imagine the Lovegoods had decorated like this. He supposed the historical society was to blame. Erik set his satchel on a dusty end-table and rolled his sleeves up in order to more cleanly battle his way past discolored lace curtain to check windows carefully for drafts. Half the coldspots in the world could be attributed to bad insulation, he figured. Charles wasn’t going to get away with any false positives on _this_ expedition.

The living room was attached directly to the dining room at the back of the house, which for some reason had a staircase of its own. To the right of that mess was the kitchen, spacious on an L set up with (Erik noted covetously) a marble island in the center. There were two doors facing the kitchen, one going to a small bathroom and the other to a walk-in pantry that Erik forged designs on. He'd always wanted a walk-in pantry, he now realized. A third door was stationed adjacent, which led to a mudroom and then outside.

Erik made sure all the doors were securely shut and double-checked the windows before heading upstairs via the curiously placed second staircase.

“Erik? Is that you?” Charles’s voice rang out as the stairs squeaked beneath his weight.

“I think it’s the ghost!” he called back.

“Sounds like one fat ghost,” Charles replied.

“I think you mean one tall, manly ghost.”

“I think I would know if that’s what I meant.”

At the top of the stairs was an actual library, which took Erik aback a step. How the fuck many farm-houses had a library? He was beginning to think somewhere in the history of the town someone had simply miswritten “weird as fuck” as “haunted” and gossip had started up from there.

“Going downstairs!” Charles informed him. He must be using the other staircase.

Erik secured the three windows in the library. Two shared a darling window-seat, looking out onto the stream. This house would actually be really nice if you updated a few things, gave it a better driveway, draining system...Too bad most of the people in town were terrified of it and in turn terrified any newcomers who attempted to live in it. Erik wondered what sort of price the city would give him on it. Another perk about not believing in ghosts was it gave you rock-bottom prices on supposed ghost houses.

There was a small black box stuck to the end of the hallway and Erik checked the window there before moving along. The hall was mirrored on either end by matching windows, and over the downward stairwell was a linen closet. No windows there.

He opened the door across from the staircase: a bedroom. The twin bed was made up with stiff linens and a purple bedspread, the frame thick and rustic. There was a lamp in the corner that didn’t work, and some thumb tacks in the walls, but that was absolutely all. Next door was even eerier: it was the baby’s room.

Erik had heard all about The Baby, but he assumed it was a story steeped in fiction. It seemed it was only garnished with fiction, because here was a nicely lit little room, a ring of giraffes chomping on each other’s tails wallpapered in a repetitive circle, bisecting the walls, peeling and moldy in places. Erik shut the door quickly and moved on. He didn’t believe in ghosts but that didn’t mean there wasn’t something inherently awful about a dead baby’s nursery.

There was a small office across the hall, with most of the furniture covered with sheets. The windows were old but sturdy. No drafts.

The last room was the master bedroom, also done up. Charles’ things were splayed out, a laptop on the hope chest at the foot of the bed, his bags indenting the mattress. The pillows on the bed were large and plush, a frankly adorable quilt spanning the massive bed. Erik considered stealing the gorgeous thing, and then lay down and considered stealing the entire bed, it was so deep and comfortable. Ghosts got the best digs.

He rested there for a few minutes, letting himself realize that his hangover wasn’t done with him yet, that, despite how much excitement and grease and coffee had pushed his hangover to the backburner, it was still very much there, just waiting for him to notice it.

Rubbing his eyes and feeling the pain spark behind them at the pressure, he groaned rather pitiably—it was wasted on the empty room. Not ready to get up, but desiring to distract himself, Erik reached over for Charles’ bag, a plain black backpack like Erik had used in middle-school: dutiful, no-nonsense. He yanked unconcernedly at the closest zipper and pulled out a book stuffed within: _Jane Eyre._

Snorting, Erik was about to crack the broken-in paperback open when he heard a long, drawn-out creaking. Jumping slightly, looking down past his feet to the bathroom, he saw that the light was on, and watched as one of the white lacquered cupboards under the sink creaked open and open until it met its limit and eked to a grudging stop.

With aggravation Erik noted that his heart was jittering rapidly in his chest, making it difficult to breathe. He did not believe in ghosts. So how could he allow his body to undermine him like this?

Angrily, he shoved himself up, tossing his pilfered book away and stalking to the bathroom, dropping down and slamming the cupboard shut again on its pitiful contents of dust and rat poison. With a sad sort of groan it popped open again. The catching mechanism was busted, Erik saw, the knob on the door didn’t fit the prongs from the cupboard. Glaring, Erik shoved the door in hard, wedging it in place with the help of so many coats of paint. Entrapped, the door stayed shut with an air of thwarted mischief, giving off a palpable sense of petulance. Erik sat back on his heels proudly. He’d have to remember to tell Charles about the faulty door—the man was not playing faulty cupboards off as a haunting.

When he stood up his head swam for a second, his hangover _demanding_ to be noticed now that patience had failed it. Erik had tried coffee, greasy food, and flirting—nothing kept the menace at bay. It was time to resort to pharmaceuticals.

 

* * *

 

He didn’t see Charles but he did see his handiwork: every single drawer and cupboard in the kitchen was wide open. He was apparently dealing with the world’s messiest paranormal researcher. Grumbling as much, Erik cleaned up after the man, shoving everything closed again but taking a cup when he found one.

The fridge was depressingly empty, apart from some condiments and a hunk of moldy cheese. There were a couple of Otter Pops in the freezer but even those had an air of decay about them. Tap water would have to do. Filling his cup up at the sink, he fished some painkillers out of his trouser pocket. Thank heavens for far-sightedness.

He downed the pills in one gulp and nearly threw them right back up as he retched at the taste of the water. It was greasy and acrid against his tongue, like death, like something dead, like something had climbed into his mouth and decayed into messy, desperate finality. He choked, retching into the sink, stomach clenching, struggling to push this poison back out of him.

Throat spasming with nausea, Erik rushed for the bathroom, more hopeful than sure that he wouldn’t be losing his lunch. He struggled to scrape the taste from his tongue, dragging it against his teeth, and was horrified when he could feel the layer of grime it left behind, gagging and spitting out a wad of black muck into the chipped porcelain sink. A moment was lost staring in horror before he grappled, shaking for some toilet paper, wiping his mouth out and pulling flake after flake of black filth out of him, retching. Yet under the dim light over the mirror his mouth looked fine, and there was no pain as if he’d drunk something destructively caustic. Whatever was in that water, it had looked perfectly clear, but those flakes hadn’t come from him.

Shivering and weak with disgust, but no longer gagging, Erik stumbled to the living room, fumbling through his bag till he got to the mints therein, scraping them over every corner of his mouth, wincing at the dueling tastes, only relaxing when mint won out, falling back into the ancient couch, rubbing his eyes as he listened to the floorboards creaking under Charles upstairs again. How strange that he’d played stairwell-hide-n-seek twice with the man now. He grabbed his notebook from his satchel and distracted himself with work.

He looked over his notes from the interview, blushing. He’d have to come up with some more questions for a real interview. His first one sounded more like the Spanish Inquisition. Emma, along with the rest of the star-struck town, would flay him alive if he really wrote an article about Charles being an ignorant charlatan. Plus, it might hurt his chances with the man. Erik didn't know how long Charles was in town for, but if he could manage to sleep with him every one of those days he was pretty sure he’d jump at the chance.

Finger-combing his hair, Erik sat up and grabbed his phone.

He had never seen Charles’ show, had no idea if this sort of dullness was normal or if the ghost houses the man usually investigated were a bit more lively. So far he didn’t see how this stuff would make good TV. So he went to the Discovery Channel website and luckily there were a couple of episodes online. He had the option between an abandoned prison in Virginia, a family home in Alabama, and an old mansion in Vermont, chose the mansion because it seemed to approximate the Gone-Away House: old, uninhabited, and quaint. He should be able to get background information, ideas for his article, and a concept of how bored he was going to be that day all at once.

The show was distinctly trashy, which was unfortunate because Charles and his team (a snarky blonde girl who was a little too hands-on with Charles for Erik’s taste, a lanky bespectacled dork, a redheaded boy, and a slim black man) seemed to handle the situations with intelligence and transparency. The editors meanwhile added theatrical camera swervings, pitchy screeching, and an ominous audio track, along with more cliffhangers than was socially acceptable. While Charles stumbled through a dark playroom, the camera man alternated between shoving the night-vision camera awkwardly close to his face, focusing in on his wide reflective eyes (which were legitimately eerie), and jiggling the camera around as if trying to catch a sprinting cat in the frame instead of an empty room.

Drama was also added by way of creepy monologues by people who claimed to have seen the ghosts there, interspersed with old-timey photos and cheap reenactments. The black man, Armando, and Charles did most studies, while Hank, the lanky one, dealt with the various data they collected and Sean, the redhead, was apparently kept on the show purely for his habit of shrieking when surprised or the slightest bit nervous. Raven, the token girl, was kept on hand for no purpose whatsoever: all she seemed to do was take pictures and make fun of everyone’s squeamishness when the situation got squeamish, not to mention cuddle up to Charles. Erik found he distinctly did not approve of this.

Charles was pretty definitely gay in front of him. Why did he allow himself to be manhandled like that by an obvious female? Erik held out hope that it was a production ploy to build up romance-ratings and tried to stop gritting his teeth anytime the two were in the same room together, which luckily wasn’t too often as Charles was beholden to his duties and the blonde girl reveled in shirking them.

While Charles whispered ghost-interview questions into the darkness of the playroom, Armando was searching for cold spots in the cellar, and Sean was hyperventilating at being left alone in the insane former owner’s bedroom. Raven was flirting with a camera-man over a cigarette in the front yard.

There was a loud crash and Sean screamed like a banshee as the camera jerked wildly, and Erik’s phone promptly shut itself off.

“What th--” was as far as he got before he saw it—breath stilling in his chest, eyes thrown wide.

Because there--in the black screen of his phone, silhouetted against the light of the dining room window--was the shadow of a man.

 


	9. Chapter 9

Before he could even think properly he whipped around on the couch, staring, but there was nothing there. The dining room table, four chairs. A window with ugly lace curtains. There was a tall vase on the table--was that what he had seen, distorted by his screen?

He turned and brought the camera back up, trying to recreate the effect.

“Erik?” Charles called to him, but he ignored it, busy. The vase was too short--or it seemed too short. Had he been holding the phone differently? He had had it up off his lap to avoid the glare of the beams of light filtering into living room, and so now it was hard to tell exactly how far up, to the left, to the right, he had been holding it.

Charles called again, though, and Erik always mocked the people in horror movies for not answering when they were called, so he got up and tried to locate the source of the man’s voice. Should he be shouting back in an upstairs or downstairs position? It had seemed to him that Charles was upstairs but he was almost sure the voice was coming from downstairs. He went with his first impression and opened the basement door, but couldn’t see far: it was dark for one, and, to make matters worse, the dangerously steep staircase buckled around a landing, cutting off any kind of view.

“Charles?” he said, unsure. It had _sounded_ like the voice came from down there but there were no lights on, and hadn’t he seemed to have heard the man creaking around upstairs earlier? But old houses were full of creaks and it was hard to place where they originated. He flipped the switch by the door, yet it hardly helped: the light on the landing was extremely dim, like there wasn’t enough electricity flowing to it. “ _What is it_?”

No response.

“...Are you down there?”

“Erik?” the man repeated, but it was strange, like it was coming from two places at once. An echo? Was his voice seeping up or down through the _vents_ in the house?

“Charles!” he called down, his voice reverberating around as in a cave.

There was a thud from upstairs and Erik pulled back, staring at the ceiling.

“Erik?” again. This time he was sure it was coming from downstairs and was two steps down when he heard footsteps upstairs and turned back, heart thumping.

Charles was skidding down the stairs, annoyed look on his face.

“ _What_?” he asked with much exasperation.

“You said my name,” Erik pointed out around the tightness of his own throat.

“No, I said _‘what_ ,’ like fifteen goddamned times.”

“No, _I_ said what.”

“ _You_ were calling my name,” Charles argued, and then his face broke into another cheeky smile. “And it won’t be the last time tonight, either.”

Erik just rolled his eyes, following Charles as the Brit strut into the kitchen. The brat--what sort of raw trick was that? Actually, now that he thought about it, _all_ the man’s walkings were actually struts. Something to do with the sway of his hips. Erik was going to have to look into this further.

He was thinking too hard about _how_ he was going to look into this to notice when Charles grabbed up his cup and refilled it at the sink, only realizing when the man turned to take a sip.

“Wait!” Erik yelped, reaching to snatch the cup from him but it was too late. He jumped back in case Charles didn’t have his masculine ability to overcome the bulimic effects of the putrescent water, but Charles didn’t even pull a face, just stared at him.

“Um, what?” Charles questioned, licking the water off his lower lip in a way Erik would have been distracted by if he were capable of being distracted away from something so incomprehensible.

“There’s...there was...doesn’t the water taste...well, awful?”

“A little tinny,” Charles shrugged, which boggled the mind. Erik pulled the cup off him and took a sniff before tasting the contents with just the tip of his tongue and then a sip. It was fine.

Scratching his head, he frowned at the cup, holding it up to the light.

Charles was staring at him outright, like he’d been left alone with a total psychopath.

“I must have had a bad cup or...I should have let the water run before I filled it. It tasted disgusting when I had some,” he explained stoically. Disgusting was an understatement.

The other man’s brow cleared and he smiled at him with a distinctly sultry lilt.

“Want me to clear your palate?” Erik tried to wither him with a glare but it didn’t seem to have any effect. The man only laughed and slid past him, brushing their sleeves as he went by. “I’ve got the stationaries set, so I’m going to do the interview now. I’ll record it and then my team will analyze it for EVP when they get here. Is that interesting enough to join me?”

Erik was glad he had watched that kitschy show or else he would have had to ask what an EVP was. “Electronic voice phenomenon? Count me in,” he got to cheer instead, basking in Charles’ glance of surprised approval.

“Took a jaunt to Google, eh?” the man accused playfully, leading the way up the main staircase. Erik followed, loving the view. Those hips had a definite sway to them. He wanted nothing more than to put his hands out and feel the bones, the sinews and muscles work against his palms. Later, hopefully; unless the man was nothing more than a truly outrageous tease. Erik didn’t even want to consider the possibility. This house was confusing enough without him having to deal with blue balls on top of it.

 

* * *

 

 

Charles sat on the hope chest at the foot of the bed in the master bedroom, giving Erik the spare chair, and setting up an enviable Zoom H4n portable audio recorder that Erik tried not to glare at since he was still suffering through the outdated H2 model himself.

“I’ll test it first,” Charles explained, and with the glint in the man’s eye Erik figured he’d get something incredibly raunchy. Instead the man hit record and asked, “Mr. Lensherr, how is it being Jewish in a backwater town in the middle of nowhere?”

“It’s not necessary for me to answer that for you to test your apparatus, you know,” Erik pointed out. But Charles smiled at him, eyes so full and bright, and so he answered anyway. “It’s fine, thank you. Are you going to tell me how you knew? Or should I assume you are psychic in addition to demented?”

Charles chuckled and pressed stop, rewind. “Your breakfast didn’t have any bacon or sausage even though the meal comes with it. So I rather assumed. Glad to know I was correct, though. Maybe I should be the investigative journalist?”

“What would the ghosts do without you?” Erik mocked. Charles fidgeted with the recorder but didn’t start it yet.

“It can’t be easy, though. I mean, to be Jewish and gay in someplace so very… _rural_.”

Erik supposed that gave him some insight into Charles’ own background.

“I won’t answer as to gay, but I probably couldn’t find a more Jewish backwater town. Avalon was originally settled as a Jewish outpost. It was called New Zion in those days...this was a long, long time ago. Asser Franco and a bunch of other Dutch Jews founded it in 1690. Eventually it grew and merged with a nearby town, Avton, and then by 1883 anti-Semitism in America was running rampant, and they renamed the city to Avalon. A lot of the Jewish families had upped and left by then. Between 1875 and 1883 about half the Jewish population just up and disappeared. Half!”

“You know a lot about this,” Charles said, awed. The heavy weight of his admiring glance was about as flattering as his lustful one, and Erik blushed slightly with it.

“Well, I wrote my thesis on it. On the history of Jews in Avalon, I mean. Not just the exodus.”

“Where did you go to school?”

“I thought you were supposed to interview the ghost, not me,” Erik joked, secretly pleased that the other man was paying so much attention to him. 

Charles snorted a laugh but crossed his legs, setting Erik’s heart to stuttering in his chest, and pressed play. His own relaxing British tones caressed their way out of the machine, and Charles stopped it, rewound, pressed record.

He motioned Erik to be silent, and said, “Who are you?”

With an eye on his expensive watch, the man remained quiet for a long time and then said, “What is your name?”

The same long silence, and Erik reached to press stop.

“I don’t think your ghost is answering you.”

Charles gave him a sedate glare, saying, “If you’d bothered to watch an episode you’d know this is how we conduct our talks. I ask a question and leave thirty seconds of silence for the entity to generate any EVPs. They’re generally outside the human frequency threshold, so when Hank gets here I’ll have him analyze the tape with his auditory equipment. Hank’s my—“

“I know who Hank is,” Erik interrupted, because the man needed to know that he wasn’t a complete slacker. He had done _some_ background research (in the last hour). He thought about asking who the grabby blonde woman was, but forbore for fear that he’d sound too interested and ignorant at the same time.

Charles pressed record again. Erik was wishing he had skipped out on this process too. Investigating non-existent entities was exactly as dull as he imagined. Stick things to walls, ask questions to the air, try to figure out how vases managed to look like people in the glare of a cell phone.

Charles spiced it up though. Getting Erik’s attention back with an expressively sultry quirk of the brow, he grinned, asked the machine, “Mr. or Mrs. Ghost? How do you feel about two men fucking in your haunted house?”

Erik was about to snark back about _his_ feelings on the matter when there was a loud crash from the closet and he jerked back in his chair. It tipped dangerously on two legs but Charles grabbed his arm, dragging him back down before sprinting to the closet, Erik barely a step behind.

Throwing the door open, Erik glanced around wildly, but Charles just stepped in and grabbed his detector box from where it had fallen to the floor.

“Let me guess, ghost attack?” Erik joked to hide his anxiety.

“The adhesive must be weak,” the Brit mumbled, brushing past Erik back to his bag on the bed. Erik found himself looking the closet over once more, though.

Closing the door securely, he followed Charles to the bed where the man was putting a new strip of adhesive on the back of the machine.

“Are you cold?” Charles asked, glancing his way.

“No, are you?”

Charles laughed and nodded to his bare arms. “You have goosebumps.”

Erik looked down. Sure enough the gingery hair on his arms was standing on end, the skin pimpled in uncountable hills. He scrubbed them away.

 


	10. Chapter 10

“I’m going to do the audio test now, see if there’s any infrasound we should be aware of. You’ll have to come with me so we can cut down on disruption.” Charles chewed gently on his lower lip as he fixed the old thermo-device and Erik had to remind himself to snark.

“Oh joy,” he sighed.

“I’m sorry that it’s not all as glamorous as the movies, or even our show. You’ll have to somehow make it sound interesting for your article,” Charles smiled. Erik liked the way it crinkled around his eyes. “I don’t envy you the task.” He went and stuck the mechanism back in the closet and then rummaged a high-tech looking box out of his duffel bag. It was a plastic machine, about the size of a shoebox, with a black strap around the sides of it and was positively covered in buttons, switches, dials, outlets, inlets, and LCD screens. Charles put the strap around his neck and plugged in something that looked like a small megaphone.

“How does it work?” Erik asked avidly. The thing lit up at the sound of his voice, the screen jumbling with numbers and a squiggling graph before falling back to baseline when he was quiet again. He pulled his mini-notebook and pen from his back pocket and took vigorous notes.

“Audio enters the capture cord here,” Charles explained, pointing to the mini-megaphone. “And the machine basically says what frequency the noise is at and then puts it on this graph so you can see the fluctuations. When I press record it files the audio to memory and we can hook it up to the computer to print.” The man fiddled with a bunch of knobs and buttons, muttering, “I’m just changing the frequency threshold so it’ll ignore everything above thirty Hz.”

“Why?”

“Well, that way if we speak it won’t show on the graph and skew the readings. Human voices are generally above thirty Hz.”

“What frequency do ghost voices show up at?”

“Ha ha,” Charles murmured distractedly. “We’re not looking for ghost voices at the moment, Mr. Lensherr. Much like checking the house for drafts that could infiltrate our study, we are now looking for infrasound, which has interesting psychological effects on humans that can give you a false positive.”

“I guess we should get started then.”

They started their slow trek through the house, going through the entire upstairs, even the attic. Erik didn’t mind the attic so much, since it was hard for Charles to climb the ladder with the box heavy on his chest and so Erik got to “help” him.

“If my arse ends up in your hands one more time today you’d better fecking do something with it,” Charles growled when he was safe and sound, flipping his hair back. Erik swore that he would, grinning widely at the adorable way Charles had of cursing.

“What frequency does this…infra…stuff show up at?” Erik questioned when Charles continued to frown at the numbers coming up.

“Eighteen is ideal. That is, the majority of people respond the most to that frequency. But anything from ten to nineteen is scientifically relevant,” the man responded in a distracted, murmury voice. Erik found that he was just as attractive when he was preoccupied as when he was focused on his seduction. It was a different kind of draw, quiet and smooth.

They moved downstairs, going through every inch of that too, even the mudroom and kitchen cupboards. Erik was surprised when Charles walked right past the basement for the front door and patio.

“Seriously? You’re not going to even check the basement? The ghosts are always in the basement!”

“Oh, fuck!” Charles wailed. “I totally forgot the basement!”

“You’re joking,” Erik scoffed with a roll of the eyes. “You’re the worst ghost-hunter ever! The basement is the first place you check!”

“We prefer paranor—“

“Yeah, yeah, alright. C’mon, let’s go.”

Flicking on the dim light, Erik made sure to keep behind Charles so he wouldn’t mess with the readings, which was great because it meant as they got to the door at the bottom of the stairs he got to sneak a hand around the smaller man’s body to open it for him.

Except it didn’t open.

The cold metal knob twisted in his grasp, but it hit an impediment and wouldn’t unlatch.

“Locked,” he said, letting loose, grazing the other man’s hip as he slipped by. Charles didn’t seem to notice, busy hooking his arm under his audio box to get a free hand, tugging at the knob himself until he was satisfied that Erik could indeed tell the difference between a locked door and a stubborn one.

Slipping the box off him completely and onto the floor, he said with excitement: “There was a ring of keys on the hook by the door! I’ll be right back.” And he lunged up the stairs.

In the meantime Erik examined the door. With a locksmith for a father it was entirely possible that he might be able to pick the lock...It was too dim to really see clearly, but his unclear view was bolstered with an examining hand to tell him the massive door was metal, or at least mostly metal. It was extremely old, riddled with rust. The feel was cold and crusty, gross. Bits of rust rubbed off on his hand and Erik realized the smell of rust was very similar to the smell of blood. Like breathing through a broken nose. Like a cut in the mouth. A smell so strong it was a taste.

One by one the hairs on the back of his neck stood on end, and Erik knew for a fact that there was someone standing just behind him.

He tried to take a breath, couldn’t, couldn’t swallow. He knew it wasn’t Charles. Five hours after meeting him he knew the weight of the man’s gaze and this was heavier. Colder.

Keeping his movements slow and steady, as he would with a rabid dog, Erik turned, staring hard into the dimness of the steep stairwell. There was nothing. But the weight of the stare didn’t abate, nor the belief, the _knowledge_ that someone was there. His eyes could try to convince him all they wanted that the stairwell was empty, but he knew otherwise.

He wanted a way out, a way around, but there was nothing, nothing he could do, no way out. Backing up a step he hit the door automatically, slipping on the audiobox, the barnacles of rust catching at his hair.

A movement—definite movement, the touch, the feel of a graze along the back of his neck and Erik couldn’t stand it, he jerked away, towards the presence, but he didn’t care—had to get away, had to push his way out.

A cord of tightness round about his throat and he tried to cry out, couldn’t. He thrashed hard against the constriction The cord about his neck snapped and he could breathe, could wrack out breath, suck it in, shaking, stuttering. He grappled up the stairs, scrabbling in a sprint, crashing through the door and right into Charles.

“Erik!” the man cried, catching him. There was a cold slide of a snake against the skin of his chest, his stomach, and he _squeaked_ , grappling his shirt out of its tuck and pulling out—his necklace. The Star of David necklace his parents had given him at his bar mitzvah.

“It did it!” he accused breathlessly, propping himself up against the wall so he wouldn’t fall down. “It pulled my necklace!”

“Erik, what are you talking about?” Charles balked, rubbing his shoulders consolingly. Erik threw him off.

“Where the fuck were you?!” he shouted, shoving the man. “You left me down there by myself!”

“Did something happen?” Charles asked, but he sounded more excited than compassionate. Erik couldn’t answer, was too busy trying to breathe, trying to think of what _had_ happened. What had happened? What _was_ that?

Before he could think of an answer Charles was running down the stairs.

“Charles, don’t!” he shouted after, was forced to follow when the man didn’t listen to him, shoving his necklace in his pocket for safe-keeping.

Charles had a ring of keys in one hand and one of his little black machines in the other, but this one was bigger, had a lit-up red LCD screen and he was running it along the edges of the door.

“What’s it doing?” Erik questioned.

“I’m checking for cold spots, for electromagnetic fluctuations, but…” He trailed off, set the electro-temp machine down and picked up the frequency finder and ran that along the hallway, too.

“What does it say?” Erik asked, shaking the man’s shoulder like an excitable child.

Charles shook his head. “I need a flashlight.”

“I’ll get it,” Erik insisted. No way was he staying down there again. Maybe if he left Charles alone the man would realize what he was talking about, the thing down there…

He shivered at even the thought, ran up to the kitchen and started rummaging around for a flashlight. Charles didn’t call out to him, even when he dillydallied in order to leave time for the man to call out to him. Did that mean there was nothing tormenting him or that he was simply too scared to speak? Erik’s heart was still racing…

The man didn’t look any worse for wear when he came back, flashlight in hand. He just examined the door from top to bottom, and then tried all the keys on the ring on it. None of them worked. Erik didn’t tell him he might be able to pick the lock. He wanted nothing to do with whatever was behind that door.

Disappointed, Charles fingered one of the many old studs sticking out of the rusted door.

“This must be what caught your necklace,” he suggested. Erik started to shake his head because that was _not_ what had caught his necklace, but Charles grabbed him by the shoulders, dragging him down and pressing him back against the cold door. He shivered, at that or the feel of Charles’ hand caressing the back of his neck, lining it up with the stud, it was hard to tell.

“See?” the Brit said, brushing where the skin of his neck pressed into the metal stud. “Come on, there’s nothing down here,” Charles sighed sadly, grabbing up his machines and going back up the stairs, noticeably dragging his feet, looking fondly back at the door as if wishing a spirit would manifest right then and there to give him something to go off of. Erik pushed past him to go first. He didn't want the cold basement air at his back. He closed the door firmly behind the brunet, wishing the damned thing had a lock.

“Maybe there’s another way in,” Charles mused hopefully. “Besides the metal door…”

Erik ignored him; he had more important inquiries.

“What does infra…infra _sound_ feel like?”

Charles set his things down on the coffee table in the living room and sat down heavily on the couch. Erik joined him, ignoring Charles’ crossed legs for the first successful time that day.

“It’s different for different people. I felt it at a house up in Canada one time. It made me feel nauseous, weak, like my muscles weren’t linked up properly. I had to sit down. Anxious—cold sweat, shaking. It was an amazing phenomenon.”

Erik shook his head. That wasn’t what he had felt. Charles continued. “For other people it can be more like paranoia. Like someone’s watching you, like there’s an oppressive presence. You feel nervous, in danger. At a certain point, about 17 Hz, it syncs up with the resonance frequency of the human eye and people sometimes see things: shadows, smudges.”

“That’s it. That’s exactly right,” Erik nodded avidly, overjoyed, so relieved he was almost weak with it. There _was_ a logical explanation for it; he had been right. Somehow his necklace must have gotten out of his shirt, caught on the door. Charles had said as much. The rest of it was simply this infrasound. Erik would do a whole article on it. He was so happy he wasn’t going to have to write about being converted to ghosts. This was much better.

But Charles was frowning.

“Well, there was infrasound, technically. But it was at 22 Hz. Nearly audible…” he explained. Erik looked on blankly.

“What does that mean?”

“Well it’s possible that this frequency affects you. It’s different for everyone, I suppose. It’s just that normally it’s between 7 and 19 that people respond. But it’s possible. It’s entirely possible…” The man seemed to get an idea, lit up with it. “We can do an experiment!”

“What kind of experiment?” Erik questioned distastefully. Anything down in that basement was plainly out of the question. Even though it was just infrasound, that didn’t mean he wanted to feel it again.

“We’ll find another area that has a frequency of 22Hz and see how you react!” Charles cheered, taking up his frequency machine again. Erik frowned. He doubted it’d be much fun to be a labrat, but anything beat going back downstairs.

Erik’s legs felt about done in for the day. He stayed on the couch and let Charles run about trying to track down the right frequency, writing down exactly what had happened to him. Actual ghost-hunting might be the scam he’d always imagined, but infrasound was amazing. It certainly explained a lot. Erik really had been petrified with fright. No wonder that people got confused into believing in ghosts—if Erik hadn’t been informed about infrasound there was no telling what he would have ended up believing.

“I found one!” Charles cried out finally and Erik slipped his notebook back into his pocket before dragging himself to the study.

 


	11. Chapter 11

Charles swept a stained old sheet off the desk chair for him to sit at, turning to beam at him.

“22.3,” the man cheered. “Same as in the basement. Sit here, close to the wall.”

Erik shoved the chair up to the wall that separated the study from the master bathroom and sat down, dreading feeling terrified again, but at least Charles would be there, and at least this time he knew it was all scientifically explicable.

But a couple minutes later and he didn’t feel any different: heart pounding with anticipation but otherwise nothing. Nothing like in the stairwell: no imagined presence, no oppressive gaze, no chill down his spine. It was even a struggle not to smile, watching Charles fidgeted eagerly, waiting for him to burst out bawling or something. Certainly nothing like the stairwell.

“Maybe if you’re alone,” Charles suggested finally. “Sometimes that works better. And in the basement you were already on edge from being in a dark stairwell alone…try to get into that mindset again. Maybe it made you more susceptible to the infrasound than you normally would be.”

Erik was a little nervous about being left alone, but he allowed it, nodding.

But try as he might all he felt was bored, not frightened. When Charles came back, _sans_ frequency finder but _avec_ tape recorder, he told him as much.

“Erik, this is great!” the man raved.

“Why?”

“Don’t you see? If you felt a presence and it really wasn’t because of infrasound then that means we have a legitimate scenario on our hands! An actual ghost—or entity.”

Erik frowned sullenly and snapped, “That’s ridiculous. You said so yourself there was nothing down there!”

“Well there’s no registered temperature fluctuation…but the basement is already cooler than the rest of the house—maybe the fluctuation is simply getting lost in the ambient temperature.”

“But you said it was infrasound—that what I felt was infrasound.”

“No I said it _could_ be infrasound, and we've just proven it wasn’t. You felt the presence at 22.3Hz and here you are sitting on 22.3Hz and you don’t feel anything! That means whatever you felt has nothing to do with infrasound!”

“We didn’t _prove_ anything,” Erik growled back. “Maybe it’s that mental state thing, maybe my mind’s just not in the right mode to get affected by infrasound, couldn’t that be the case?”

“I’d say your mind would be much more susceptible to infrasound after your first encounter than before it. For Christ’s sake, Erik—not twenty minutes ago you were insisting a ghost pilfered your necklace, now you’re saying you didn’t feel an entity at all!”

“That’s not what I’m saying. I felt something, I did. But it wasn’t a ghost. It was what you said—infrasound.”

Charles shook his head hard with frustration, fiddled with his recorder.

“Just tell me exactly what you experienced, okay?” Charles demanded, pressing record and setting the device down on the end table beside them. “What is your name?”

Erik glared at him but answered. “Erik Lensherr.”

“And can you tell me what you saw, Mr Lensherr?”

“I didn’t see anything.”

Charles pressed stop, stamping his foot with aggravation. “Erik!”

“I didn’t!” Erik snarled. “I didn’t see anything, I only felt it!”

“Okay, okay,” Charles said through his teeth, manhandling the recorder again.

“Can you please tell me what happened to you? From the beginning, please.”

For some reason ‘the beginning’ made him think about his run-in with the bad tap water, but he pushed the thought aside.

“I was following an extremely annoying ghost-hunter down a set of rickety old steps to the basement when we got to a locked door. The complete jerk left me sitting in an empty stairwell alone in the dark claiming that he only needed to get a set of fucking keys, but instead pissed about for an extraordinary amount of time.”

“I had to get my electroscope,” Charles muttered bitterly, pouting.

Erik tried to focus on the story he was telling, which was hard since he really, really did not want to think about it again, ever. He remembered that it was simply infrasound, nothing to be ashamed of. “The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end, and it felt like someone was standing behind me.”

“Did they touch you? Breathe on you?” Charles interrupted to ask. “How did you know they were there?”

“I didn’t feel anything physical. Just like someone was staring at me. A presence, or whatever.”

“Did it feel like a person or a thing—more human or animal in nature?”

That gave Erik pause. “It felt…like a rabid dog. Or…a person, definitely a person. Part person and part animal I guess.”

Charles frowned and Erik realized that hadn’t been very clear, but he didn’t know what to amend it to.

“Was the presence more male or female in nature?”

Erik tried to remember. “Male, I guess. I don’t know.”

“Then what happened?”

It was all so hazy now; it took Erik a second to think of it. “I…I turned to look, but there was nothing there. I backed up against the door and the thing pulled…I mean…my necklace caught, on a stud. I jerked away and the necklace choked me,” Was that right? It had felt more like the thing had pulled his necklace tight, choking him, and then he had pulled away. He couldn’t remember it properly now. “I ran up the stairs and my necklace broke,” or had the necklace broken and then he run up the stairs? “That’s it.”

Charles nodded eagerly, caught up the tape recorder to speak closer to it. “The subject experienced these phenomenon at 15.6 degrees Celsius, the EMF meter shows an electromagnetic reading well within average range for the area (consistent and non-complex), and the frequency for the spot in question is 22.3Hz: low but technically within average range. I’ll re-examine the area with the more sensitive MADS sensor to be on the safe side. The subject showed no response to a second site of 22.3Hz.”

“What’s a MADS sensor?” Erik questioned once the machine was done recording.

“It’s a more sensitive version of the electro-magnetic field meter. They measure both AC and DC components of the magnetic field and can do so 250 times a second, in 3 orthogonal directions simultaneously. It covers a frequency range from DC – 125Hz and an amplitude range of + / - 1000mG.”

“Can boredom kill? Should I stand so close to you when you’re being this boring?”

“Kindly shut yourself up. _In short_ , some people believe that, just like infrasound induces experiences, certain magnetic fields, or fluctuations thereof, can create the same sorts of false-positives.”

“So there is still a chance,” Erik clung hopefully. “Even if it wasn’t infrasound I felt—it could be this magnetic field thing.”

Charles eyed him glaringly. “So now you’ll concede that it might not have been infrasound?”

“Only if I have magnetic fields to fall back on,” he grinned.

The MADS sensor took the both of them to haul, mainly because each sensor, one for AC and one for DC, were individually hooked up to their own laptop. It told them that the stairwell had a standard magnetic field that fluctuated slightly closer to the door. Erik was hoping it would augment his argument, that electromagnetic disparities coupled with a 22.3Hz frequency was what was causing his anxiety. Instead Charles insisted everything was well within average range and that anything Erik had felt was purely paranormal.

They fought about it.

Erik accused Charles of downplaying the interference of the magnetic fields; Charles accused Erik of overestimating the importance of the infrasound and magnetism.

“You don’t know anything about this stuff! You didn’t even _know_ about infrasound until this morning!” Charles argued.

“Well you don’t know anything about anything ever!” Erik retorted, not his best debate point.

“You’re an idiot!” Charles shouted back, storming upstairs simply to get away from him.

“Well you’re a fraud!” Erik yelled, simply to hurt him.

Charles turned on him immediately, and Erik felt that oppressive presence again, but this time the source was obvious: it was definitely coming from the diminutive brunet stabbing a finger into his chest.

“Don’t you fucking dare! Don’t you libel my work just because you can’t admit to yourself that what you felt was real!”

Then the man whirled and stomped his way back upstairs, slamming a door when he got there.

Erik complained to himself vaguely and collapsed on the couch again to go over his notes and add to them the fact that Xavier was maddening and an asshole and just a little bit scary when he was pissed.

Once he wrote out all his frustrations, he thought again about what had happened. Charles had said himself that different fluctuations affected people in different ways. Why couldn’t he just admit that while his findings might be within the realm of normality, for Erik and whoever else had accused this house of being haunted through the years, these so-called normal levels induced perceptions that were very _not_ normal? Why was that so hard to admit?

The man was just impossible, but then again why should he _want_ to accept Erik’s idea when he got paid so much money to believe it was ghosts?

A wave of guilt hit him for thinking something so mercenary about Charles of all people, who seemed so genuine and passionate. And hot—shouldn’t forget hot.

That put him in a conundrum, though. He still very much wanted to sleep with the brunet but after that fight he got the feeling Charles would not be feeling likewise for quite a while. At least not without some serious apologizing and sucking up. Or sucking other things, maybe. Erik could get behind _that_. Did Erik want to make up though? Why couldn’t he just sleep with Charles without apologizing? Societal courtesies were no fair.

To distract himself from his situation, he tracked down the remote-control and turned on the TV. But there was no cable, which made sense. The place didn’t even have a phone, why would it have cable? Still, he managed to pick up a fuzzy image on one of the base channels and watched a rerun of Maury, keeping it on mute since all he could hear was static anyway. The image was pitchy, fuzzing out between cocky jerks being informed they were or were not the father, and pure white noise, at times picking up on some monotonous image from another channel: it looked like a series of wells, deep circles in the ground. It was hard to make out.

In the end it hurt his eyes too much to keep up with. He turned it off again, rubbing the ache from his temples. He didn’t have any more ibuprofen and his headache was still all too present.

It took him longer than it should have to notice the whispering.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dun dun dunnnnn!


	12. Chapter 12

At first his mind played it off as background noise: people talking outside, Charles on his cell upstairs. Only when his brain had eliminated these possibilities did the organ bring the noise to his conscious attention.

He turned his head, side to side, working out the direction: the corner, by the TV. The vent: the wrought iron lattice work on the floor that covered the duct that led down... to the basement. He eased closer to it, kneeling and bending low to listen. He was glad Charles wasn’t around to find him in this position: he already had his heart set on topping that luxurious British ass and he refused to be thwarted.

It was the wind, of course, or else amalgamated noises from around the house, from Charles upstairs or a million other things. Amazing though, that his brain could label random noises as whispers. A recording of the quirky phenomenon should definitely appease Charles. Even if the man was an aggravating arguer, that didn’t mean Erik had at all ruled out the idea of sleeping with him.

Erik grabbed his recorder from his satchel, dropped to the floor by the vent and started recording, propping himself up on his elbows over the vent and listening hard. Damn but it really sounded like people. He wondered if it could be: maybe there _was_ another way into the basement and someone was in there—several someones it sounded like. Maybe Charles had been right about there being another way in.

He tried to make out what the people were saying, or even how many people there might be. But he still couldn’t even tell if he was hearing actual people or just the natural noise. All the voices, if that’s what they were, seemed to blend together until it sounded like little more than a stiff breeze through dead leaves.

Frowning, he turned the recorder off and sat up.

“Erik,” said a reedy voice.

From the grate. Close--not from the basement at all but as if someone were speaking with their lips pressed up to the metal. But there was nothing--there was _nothing_.

He was too shocked, too terrified to respond, frozen in place with his knees just brushing the border of the vent--too close, too close to that voice and whatever that voice was attached to.

“Erik, Erik, _Erik, Erik, **Erik**_ ,” the vent hissed, a dozen different voices spitting his name—his _name_.

With a weak cry he fell back, scrambling to get away. He shoved himself finally up to his feet, turned to run, to sprint to Charles along the main staircase, but stopped dead in his tracks.

The basement door was open.

He had _shut_ the basement door.

He was just considering bolting past to get to the staircase regardless, when the door creaked open another inch, right in front of him.

He didn’t bother sticking around to see how much farther it opened, he just hurdled over the couch and clambered up the back staircase, sprinting and falling, scrabbling on all fours for a second before he could get his feet back under him.

Charles glared at him when he burst into the library, then turned without a word and stalked back into the main bedroom. His hips weren’t swaying now, but looked about bolted in place, so that his steps were stiff and tight.

Erik followed close behind, taking deep, calming breaths. The tape recorder was still clutched in his hand.

“Can,” he tried to say but it was a croak of speech, impossible to understand. Charles sat down on the floor with a laptop, his shoulders taut, as Erik cleared his throat and tried again. “Can infrasound—magnetic fields—can that stuff make you hear things?”

Charles’ face went red up to the tips of his ears, and he glared at his computer screen wrathfully.

“Oh yes!” he sneered. “It makes you hear things, it makes you act like a complete fecking arse, it makes you an arrogant sonofabitch. Pretty much anything you don’t want to deal with, just put it off on infrasound; why not!”

Erik shook his head, trying to get his thinking processes back on line. It didn’t work.

He collapsed down next to Charles, too close for people who were technically fighting. But he didn’t want to fight, he wanted help.

“Just answer me: can it?”

“Why, are you hearing things now?” the man didn’t ask it nicely, didn’t even ask it with much interest, as if he were only speaking because he had developed a way of fashioning his words into daggers and wanted the opportunity to inflict pain.

“I don’t...I don’t...” Erik murmured, confused by what had happened and shocked by what _was_ happening, by having the seemingly kind man be _mean_ to him.

“Even if infrasound can’t make you hear things, why not just play it off as an overactive imagination? That’s an easy excuse and you don’t even need to warp scientific facts for your own cowardly desires. Are you a naturally imaginative person? Hysterical?”

Erik tried to think if he was, if there was a history of hysterics in his family he could have inherited without noticing, but then he realized that Charles was just being a dick, wasn’t actually trying to help him.

The audacity of it chilled him, hardening to something affronted and frozen in his chest, and he vowed then and there to use this hardness to cut himself away from the man. Whatever tendrils of affection or lust the man may have managed to worm a way into Erik, he would slice away.

Charles, intuitive man that he was, seemed to pick up on this and let his ire fall from him like an ill-fitting coat.

“Look, I’m sorry,” he muttered bitterly. “I am. I’m sorry.”

Erik ignored him angrily. It wasn’t like he had these kinds of existential crises often. When he did have them he would like some god-damned sympathy if that wasn’t too much to ask.

“Fuck,” Charles hissed under his breath, frustrated. “Okay, it annoys the hell out of me to say this, but I actually agree that the place isn’t haunted. All right? Are you happy now? Will you look at me?”

Erik did look at him, but only out of shock. “But you said--”

“I know what I said,” Charles grumbled. “Honestly, it aggravated me more that you were, after six hours, feigning the kind of scientific aptitude it took me years of professionalism and research to attain, more than that I actually disagreed with you. Although I would like to point out that we've only been here a few hours, so I'm not ruling anything out quite yet.”

Erik tried to take this in, but his mind didn’t want to. It felt like betrayal, to have the man suddenly keen on playing off his experience rather than playing into it, even though the man didn’t even know he’d had an experience, if that was what he had had, which he certainly didn’t know for sure yet was what he had even had and he shouldn’t jump to conclusions just because it was the creepiest thing to have happened to him and maybe like the basement there was a perfectly reasonable explanation for a fucking vent to whisper his fucking name.

“So you see,” sighed Charles, oblivious to Erik’s mind fraying at the seams. “I’m not the hard-nosed scientist I like to pretend. I’m just as petty and ignoble as the rest of them. Put that in your article why don’t you.”

Shaking his head, Erik tried to understand.

“But why? Why do you agree with me?” _Why do you agree with what I used to think..._

“My options are pretty slim. Either there’s a ghost that only likes to scare you in stairwells but somehow manages not to manifest itself in any way that can be construed as data or you’re an anomaly and respond to 22.3Hz under duress. I left you alone in a dark stairwell--it’s a bit scarier than being left in a sunlit study.”

Well, that’s what the man thought now. It was time to see how he reacted now that Erik did have his adored hard data.

“I want you to listen to this,” he said, pressing the recorder into Charles’ hand. The man’s free hand pressed over his, warm and sure.

“Erik, you’re freezing,” the brunet pointed out, surprised.

“Please, just listen. Just rewind it a little and listen,” Erik begged.

Charles pulled their hands loose and did so.

It came out sounding fainter on the machine, more garbled, and it had been plenty garbled to begin with.

“Is it…static? Wind?” the man questioned.

“It’s from the vent. To the basement,” Erik explained, staring Charles meaningfully in the eye. Charles didn’t avoid his gaze, but he didn’t look quite convinced either.

“I’ll have Hank analyze it when he gets here tomorrow,” he appeased. But somewhere behind those sunny blue eyes, gears were turning, curiosity gripping him, the scent of a puzzle to solve. “What do you think it is?”

Erik knew what he thought it wasn’t: static, wind. But what did that leave him with? His mind blazoned an answer, but it wasn’t the one he wanted, and he worked around it.

“Could there be someone down there? Could there be another way in?” he murmured. Charles looked him gently in the eye, relaxing against his anxiety, hand pressed over his—not seductively but sweetly, like a friend rather than a conquering impresario.

“I think it's time we found out.”


	13. Chapter 13

Erik wasn’t out of shape. He jogged. He did kickboxing with Mark once a week. There was no reason for him to be panting like a fat kid in gym class from just trying to climb through bramble.

“Did you find anything?” Charles shouted from the front porch, leaning over the banister to watch his progress.

“I’ve gotten ten fucking feet—can you give it a break?”

“Hey, I told you to let me do it! Now you can bloody well tolerate,” Charles laughed back.

Erik just sighed. It was true that the brunet had wanted to examine the perimeter himself, investigate a way in. But Erik had grumbled for his right to get away and finally won. It was bad enough being in that house at all. He knew better than to think he could sit in there alone, and they only had the one pair of muck boots. He’d offered to carry Charles around like a packhorse, but Charles was even more disgusted with the suggestion than he was and had only glared him down carefully.

So he’d won the right to fight shrubs, slick mud, and blackberry tendrils. Yippee. At least nothing out here was hissing his name, or tricking him into thinking something was hissing his name. Small gains—he’d take what he could get.

With one hand he grabbed a bush, snapping some tall branches so he could get through, but that only got him through another couple feet before a blackberry bramble was shoving itself straight up against the wall of the house, climbing up, an impediment that no amount of keeping to the house-line could outmaneuver. He stopped to catch his breath, hands on his hips, shaking sweat from his eyes.

“What is it now?”

“Would you shut up before I leave your ass here? I could be at home calling in sick right now.”

Charles smiled at him cheekily, shading his eyes from the bright sunlight.

“Save it for tomorrow. I’m going to make sure you need it.”

“I’m going to hold you to that,” Erik grinned breathlessly back, pointing at him as domineeringly as possible.

“I can't wait.”

Chuckling, Erik turned back to task, stomping down all the spikes he could and stumbling over them, cursing when he got scraped. It was difficult to see through the gaps in the bramble, but he tried, rubbing aches out of his cut up calves.

“Find me a way in and I promise to kiss it and make it better,” quipped Charles.

“Don’t you have something you could do inside rather than bothering me?”

“Sorry, I have to save my lube for later.”

But when Erik turned around to gape, the man was already trotting off, laughing wickedly to himself. At last Erik was free to be as cursory as possible. He couldn’t say he’d mind finding an extra door sitting out here innocuously enough—some kids fooling around, something to explain what he’d heard, what he’d thought he’d heard. But at the same time he didn’t want to go into the basement, and he knew that’s what would happen if he did find a way in. There was simply no way Charles would find a way in and not use it. Be it door, window, vent, Charles was going to utilize even the most difficult of entry points. So it really would be in everyone's best interest that Erik not find a way in. _Any_ way in.  

He fought his way past the remaining shrubs and tripping vines, mostly ignoring the house now. The backyard was weed-choked but had at least remained mostly clear of the encroaching forest, unlike the side of the house. It was quiet back here, just the gentle gurgling of the creek. He paused long enough to wipe his face on his shirt sleeve and fix his hair, but that was as much time as he was allowed as the mud door opened and Charles stood in full glowering glory.

“For someone who doesn’t want me to yell at him, you certainly are asking for it. Take those boots off—I’ll do it myself.”

“Hey, they’re my fucking boots. You should have come prepared. Now, if you want me to carry you, that’s something we could come to an agreement on. Otherwise…”

Charles glared at him, icy now. “I’ll be inside.”

Erik grinned, waved goodbye.

He walked the back of the house dutifully just in case Charles was still watching him, looking for windows, vents. He could tell with a glance that there was no door out here, no easy access. Rounding to the creek side of the house, he checked there as well. Nothing. Nothing, nothing, nothing. Sighing with relief, he went to the creek, standing on the stone wall and allowing himself to be mellowed by the soft sounds of its burbling, considered putting his legs in to cool off .

But the house couldn’t let him have that.

_Tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap._

The noise was small but insidious, burrowing into his brain even over the gurgling of the brook, a nausea-inducing metal-on-metal. The noise was monotonous, not hysterical, not frightened, but steady, waiting for Erik’s notice, knowing it would get it. And it was right.

For a moment he held out, staring at the goosebumps rising on his arm, at the sun’s reflection on the water. Then he turned around, heartbeat heavy in his ears but still not loud enough to drown it out.

Looking up at the house, he could see the little windows leading to the library, the cute one with the window seat, the one he’d been so thrilled, so envious about earlier. It left him disgusted now. Nauseous that such an evil house could try to trick him into liking it by way of an adorable library, like a murderer with a nice smile. There was the dining room window by the stairs, the curtains of the living room, the wide porch. The short stretch of grass from here to there, and the _tap tap tap_ hidden somewhere in its depths.

Between the scraggly tufts of grass and the spiked weeds, some rusted piece of metal burned in the sun. Erik glared at it, sidling a bare inch closer. The metal appeared to be a grate, like a wrought iron version of the one inside, which was what decided it for him.

Without waiting for creepy voices or anything worse, Erik stepped around it and stomped back to the front porch without bothering to continue his search.

Charles jumped up from the stoop immediately, writhing excitedly on the very last step.

“Well?” he crowed. “Did you find anything?”

“Nope,” Erik responded with a shrug. “Not a thing.”

“What!” the man groaned, melting with dismay. He straightened up almost immediately, stomping one foot. It was so petulantly childish that Erik had to smile, going up the steps and ruffling Charles’ hair fondly as he did so. The man ducked under his grasp, pushing his hand away. “Mrs. Hudson has got to have a key to that damned door.”

“If she did, wouldn’t she have left it? She left all the other keys.”

“…There must be a way in, there simply must! Are you sure you didn’t see anything out there? Not even a vent? You’re skinny enough to fit through a vent, aren’t you?”

Erik collapsed, shrugging, onto the swing bench, pushing himself by one foot relaxingly.

“Nope, nothing.”

Charles didn't see through his lie, threw himself down next to him, shoving the seat back until it banged against the banister, grabbing Erik’s arm like an overeager puppy with a new toy.

“Do you think the historical society would let me take the door off? I could just take it off the hinges. I'd put it back on just as soon as we were done. It wouldn’t affect the integrity of the house at all. That thing’s a health hazard anyway! It’s a total tetanus trap! You’re lucky it caught your necklace and not your neck or we could be in the hospital right this very second!”

Erik frowned dreamily. He hated hospitals and doctors and everything else involved in those death pits, but he wondered if he wouldn’t prefer it to this. At least he’d never experienced infrasound or whatever magnetic shit there. Even though his mom had died in the hospital, no vent had ever hissed his name there at least.

He shook his head, trying to clear his mind. It had just _sounded_ like his name. He was imagining things—infrasound, electromagnetic fluctuations, whatever—vents did not call names... overactive imagination, hysteria, latent insanity, that’s all it could be. That’s all he’d let it be.

“Erik, Erik are you listening?”

He leaned his head back against the bench, gazing up at the handsome man.

“No.”

Charles glared but smiled back him. The look was fond, practically affectionate, and Erik thought that maybe this was better than being in the hospital, just _possibly_. Whatever madness this house evoked in him, at least it had given him this in recompense.

“Would you be more attentive if I were talking about…lunch?”

“It’s got to be way past lunch time.”

“Er…linner?”

“Yum, linner, my favorite fake meal. What’s on the menu?”

“I don't know. What are you feelings towards pizza?”

“I always approve of pizza,” Erik nodded, grabbing his phone.

He had forgotten about earlier, about the fact that his phone was not working, only remembering it when he was hit by a wave of surprise as the phone went straight to the home screen with no problems.

“What the…” he mumbled, but was interrupted as his phone lit up with alerts for a slew of missed calls, including Emma and, weirdly enough, his father, who _never_ called, especially at peak rates. Living in Canada with his new wife, it was technically international prices and that galled Papa Lensherr’s bone-deep frugality. Email was cheaper.  

Shaking his head with confusion, he pushed the thoughts aside and looked through his contacts. There were plenty of so-called pizza places in Avalon--it was practically the town’s official food—but there was only _one_ pizza place that was appropriately amazing and also delivered.

“You…have a pizza place in your contacts?” Charles questioned, reading over his shoulder, close enough for Erik to feel his warmth even in the heat of the day.

“Hey, I’m a bachelor. This is standard bachelor fare,” he defended.

“Oh, thank god!” the man laughed, collapsing against his shoulder, breath condensing under his collar. “I mean, I was definitely going to sleep with you regardless, but I think I would have felt the slightest bit guilty had I helped you to cheat on someone.”

Erik blushed heatedly and accidentally started fidgeting.

“And…um…um, you? Any…cheating, or…well?”

“Articulate as ever, darling. What’s your profession again? Something to do with the English language, isn’t it? But don’t worry. No boyfriend around to beat you up for touching me,” Charles teased, hair flopping into his eyes.

Erik smiled back, caressing his hand over the inside of Charles’ knee, feeling the muscles tighten under his palm.

“I was hoping to do a bit more than touch.”

“So was I,” the brunet grinned back at him, then grabbed his phone and pushed it at his face. “Starting with pizza.”

“Large, meat supreme. Lots of soda. See if they have dessert pizza! Don’t forget the garlic bread!” Charles cheered, jumping up and bounding to the front door.

“My god, are you trying to disgust me into not sleeping with you?”

“See if they’ll pick us up some alcohol. I’m going to need to be very drunk if I'm to ignore your rudeness enough to fuck you.”


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for drug use :)

Charles had to finish his work in the house, taking pictures for “photographic paranormal phenomena” by which he apparently meant “ghost candids”. Charles asked if he wanted to help, and did it with that glinting, mischievous gleam to his eye, but still Erik turned him down. He was completely over this house. He couldn’t wait till Charles was finished. Whatever that glinting eye was promising now, Erik was hopeful he could get it to be just as promising back at his house that night. And he _did_ have phone calls to make, now that his phone was working.

Although Emma had called him three times, he dialed his dad’s number first. It wasn’t weird for Emma to call him, but his dad almost never called—not during the day, not on a weekday, when rates were highest. He hoped nothing had happened. Emma would murder him if he tried to run up to Canada at a time like this.

Jakob picked up on the second ring, not making Erik feel any reassured what with the anxious way his father said his name.

“Erik? _Erik?”_

“Dad? What’s wrong? Has something happened?” he responded just as nervously. He did not much want to be an orphan and hoped that was not what his father had called to tell him--that he was in an accident, that he had only minutes left to live or something...

“Nothin, nothin, son!” Jakob exclaimed. “I juss counnit get a hold a you. I was worried.”

Erik sighed, leaning his head back on the swing bench, letting relief flood through him, making him realize how anxious he really had been.

“My phone’s on the fritz. Why’d you call? I thought something had happened.”

“No, nothin. I was juss worried about ya. Are you alright?”

Erik blushed, glancing at the house. His mother was always the one that had threatened bodily harm about stepping a foot into even the driveway of the Gone-Away House, but that didn’t mean his father would be any happier to find him there.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” he sort of lied. “Just working. Emma’s got me on a field assignment.”

“Thass good. You like field assignments,” his father said blankly. Neither one of them was good talking on the phone to one another. They maneuvered much better face-to-face or via email, when they could gauge reactions or spend time planning a response. Erik figured it was his father’s fault. He never had problems with phone conversations with anyone else. Although it was hard at the moment to think of anyone else to whom he regularly talked on the phone.

“How’s Liz?” he questioned, scrounging to fill the silence.

“Fine,” Jakob answered, thankful for a venue of conversation. “Did you want to talk to her?”

Erik winced. “No, thanks.” He liked Liz fine enough from afar, but the truth of the matter was his father had remarried when he was 19; he’d never really had a use for Elizabeth, and for all that she seemed a nice enough woman, he had never warmed to her as part of his actual family. She had an older son from a previous marriage and Erik felt the same towards him: cool guy, about as much a part of his family as the corner-store druggist. For him, his family would always be him, Jakob and Edie. There was no room in that world-view for additions, no matter how pleasant the applicants.

“Jimmy’s in town,” Jakob informed him. Speak of the devil.

“Between jobs?” he inquired, grinning while he picked at the gray paint peeling from the swing bench. Erik respected the man’s nomadic tendencies as a sign of abundant testosterone, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t tease him unmercifully about it. If they wanted him to pretend to have a brother he would do it with full sadistic abandon.

“Erik,” Jakob growled warningly. That was apparently the brunt of the rebuff and his father continued pleasantly. “You should come visit sometime, too. It’s been a long time.”

That was true. The last time Erik had visited was Hanukkah a few years ago when the holiday had overlapped the days he got off for Christmas. It had been painfully awkward watching Elizabeth try to get in the groove of the Jewish tradition while still attempting to appease her son’s nominal Christianity. He and James had bonded over their shared pity by getting gruesomely drunk and playfully fistfighting. Erik still had a scar. He hoped James did too.

“Maybe soon,” he said.

Jakob coughed, more miserably than usual and asked, “How’s... _things_?” Meaning his love-life. His father _hated_ asking about it, but thought it his fatherly duty to support Erik’s homosexuality, and he was never one to shun duty.

Erik grinned, thinking of what he would have to say if were to be honest with his father: ‘Well, now that you mention it, Dad, there’s a hot piece of British real estate I’m planning on planting my flag in it later tonight. Trust me when I say you’d be proud.’

Instead he said: “Everything’s good, Dad. I’ve got to go, though. On assignment and everything, you know how it is.”

“Right, right,” Jakob sighed with relief. “Well, be careful. I worry about you, out there all by yourself.”

Erik couldn’t help but be confused, even a little startled, by this. His father had never shown a great amount of concern regarding his solitude before: Jakob had been treating him like a grown man even _before_ he was one, so it was strange to get the babying treatment at this time of life.

“You do?” he queried accidentally.

“Of course. You know I...I was thinking of Mama today.”

Erik’s stomach clenched uncomfortably. They didn’t talk about Mama too often. Hardly ever, in fact.

“Yeah? What...what’d you think of?”

“Just...she’d be so proud of you. She’d be sad we don’t see each other so much. Hell, she’d be pissed as all getout at me,” Jakob laughed. Erik smiled too.

“You should come out here sometime. We could go visit her, visit the old house...”

Jakob’s voice was immediately gruff, business-like. “Well, you know how rough it is to leave the business. There’s just no one to take care of it if I go. Locksmithing is tricky you know. You remember. I’d _like_ to—you know I’d _like_ to…”

Frowning bitterly, Erik ripped a swath of paint off the bench and cleared his throat violently. “Yeah. I know.”

“It sure would be nice to have you up here to help me. I mean, if you’re not pursuing this journalist stuff…”

“Pursuing it? Dad, I work at a paper.”

“You know what I mean.” Erik did. His father referenced it enough. _If you’re not working for The New York Times, if you’re not interviewing the president, well, maybe you should just reconsider taking over the family business then. If the Avalon Daily is as good as it’s going to get…_

Erik’s voice came out appropriately vindictive. “I’ve _really_ gotta go now.”

“Erik,” Jakob started, but he cut the man off.

“Bye, Dad.”

He relented momentarily though, biting the inside of his mouth at his inability to follow through on his rebuke. “I love you.”

As soon as his father had sighed but said it back he hung up, glaring at the porch and swinging the bench tetchily with one long leg.

 

He called Emma next, hoping she would manage to not piss him off. At least she wasn’t likely to bring up his mother, or at least not remind him of the dissonance that had ruled his life since his mother’s death.

“I’ve been trying to call you all day, you loafer,” she answered the phone crossly. “Don’t tell me you let that tart charm you into his bed already. I was hoping you’d wait until your job was _over_ before you succumbed.”

“What can I say?” he sighed contentedly, allowing the playful back-and-forth of their arguments to cheer him back up. “You underestimated my desperation.”

“Just a poor girl from the back country getting swept off her feet by a hot-shot rich boy,” Emma cackled. “Make sure you finish sweeping out the fireplace before you bone your prince, Cinderella.”

Erik rolled his eyes. Where did Emma come up with this stuff? He suspected romance novels had something to do with it.

“If he _were_ a rich prince you would have snatched him straight off the Greyhound.”

“He’s gayer than a maypole; what am I supposed to do with him? I told you I’d make it worth your while.”

“So you threw a hottie in my way—that does not get you off the hook for this fucking house, believe me.”

“You should be happy!” Emma balked. “A rich man who bats for your team, please send me a postcard when he’s jetsetting you to Paris. A stop at _Cartier_ for me wouldn’t be remiss.”

Erik didn’t point out that Emma was only offering him her refuse: if Charles had been bi she would have fought him for the man heartlessly enough. Nor did he argue that putting the brunet in his path was only fair payment for shipping him out to his death at a haunted house. As for Charles being rich, he guessed that made the man officially eccentric rather than crazy. Outside of that, he didn’t care. It wasn’t like the guy was likely to buy him a new car after one fuck, no matter how much he’d perfected his technique by now.

“If you’re done gloating, I’ve got work to do.”

“He must not be that good a lay; you’re still your regular bitchy self.”

“Goodbye, Emma,” he threatened. The sadistic woman laughed jovially, but at least she finally got down to brass tacks.

“I only wanted to make sure everything was working out. You get some good material for the article?”

Erik thought of the vent, the basement. He thought of Charles’ heated gaze, the swing of his hips as he walked.

“Yeah, some pretty good stuff,” he said noncommittally.

“Anything big? I can start gearing the paper with teasers.”

Erik refused to let that spark his imagination. He kept his mind carefully away from what Emma could mean by "big".

“Maybe. I still have some more interview stuff to do,” he claimed. Their first interview had had less to do with Charles, his team, and the Gone-Away House than it did with Charles’ questionable intelligence-level, after all. Not the best ingredients for an awesome article.

“Just make sure it’s admissible and not pillow-talk. The last thing I need is to hand Moira a story about the ADN getting sued for sexpionage or something seedy.”

“I’ll get any pillow talk on record so he can’t wiggle out of it, you’ve got my word.”

“I knew I didn’t need to ask Hudson to make up the second bed,” Emma laughed. “You’re too predictable by half.”

Confused, Erik questioned, “What second bed?”

“At the House. When I told Xavier he’d have a houseguest he had me get the caretaker, Mrs. Hudson, to set up the guest bedroom. He hadn’t seen you at that point, though, so don’t feel offended.”

“Why would I need a bed at all?”

Well, he had been planning to use the one, of course, but not to sleep in, and he certainly didn’t see why they’d need two to get anything done, unless maybe they broke the first one.

“Well you've got to sleep somewhere. Are you going to stay up all night waiting for apparitions? That’ll get boring fast.”

Erik’s whole body went cold, as if his blood had turned to ice. His limbs tingled, prickled. His ears rang with a thin metallic tone.

“Emma,” he hissed, clutching his phone tighter in numb fingers. “What the _fuck_ are you talking about?”

The woman, catching on to his distress, was quiet on the other end for a moment. “Did you...didn’t you look at that dossier I gave you at all?”

She continued, probably accusing him of laziness, but Erik didn’t bother trying to catch it, just hung up on her and _ran_ out to his car to grab the dossier from where he’d thrown it to the backseat.

The very first page was a schedule.

He snatched it up and stuffed the rest of the papers haphazardly back into the car.

 

**_9:00- Pickup at Dewdrop Inn, Rm 237_ **

**_11:00- Meet Hudson at Ash Creek House._ ** _Get keys! She’ll handle your meals, so don’t ask me for the company card. I’m serious._

 **_Overnight: Overview ghost-hunting._ ** _Hudson has the guestroom set up for you, although I doubt you’ll be needing it!_

 **_8:00-Breakfast. Ghost crew arrives._ ** _They have a van apparently, and I already gave them directions and your phone number, so keep your phone on!_

 **_9:00-Bring GhostCrewer#1 to high school to develop film._ ** _Principal will meet you at the parent’s entrance at 9 sharp. Don’t be late!_

 

Erik stopped reading because he didn’t care about anything past Overnight. How could she want him to stay there overnight? How could Charles want to stay there overnight? How could Erik in good conscious book it the fuck out of there as soon as dusk settled and leave the brunet to his bloody fate?

Even thinking of a way to try to convince the stubborn man to leave with him was gut-wrenchingly daunting. It was fucking impossible. Ten minutes in and Erik could tell that Charles was stubborn to the point of madness. He’d rather try and get Newt Gingrich to a gay orgy than get Charles to leave before scheduled. Hot as he knew he was, good as partners told him he was at sex, Erik had no illusions that he could _seduce_ Charles into abandoning ship. Charles would take him for all he was worth and smile undaunted into his request at the end of it, sated but unconvinced. He could feel it in his bones.

In predetermined defeat he dropped his head into his shaking hand. What was there to do? If it was impossible to get Charles out of the house then what could he do? He could leave without Charles. He could pass up on this sweet, sultry, special temptation and sit at home consumed with lust for the rest of the evening.

Before his mind could even consider it, his cock was _aching_ with too much plaintiveness to be ignored. Okay, so that option was out. Walking away at this point might actually kill him from sexual frustration.

So what was he supposed to do? Wear Charles like an anti-anxiety coat for the rest of the evening? Just stay right beside him, or over him, or under him? Don’t leave his side and then fuck themselves into such a stupor that it was impossible for the house to terrify him? But how was he supposed to deal with the house in the meanwhile? In between now and fucking his brains out, what was he supposed to do? He couldn't handle that house, couldn't handle the pounding of his heart, or the million and one thoughts his brain was sending his way. He needed a way to calm down, to get the edge off. 

Inspiration struck, and Erik looked up at the house nervously. Was Charles watching? Could he see?

Erik didn't look too hard—it felt too much as if he’d see something there he didn’t want to see. Damn, this place had really gotten under his skin. Then he slipped quickly to his passenger seat, hurting his knees on the dried gravel and reaching an arm under the seat and grabbing the dark red tin he’d stuffed there back in college. Glancing at the house nervously again, he pried it open and checked through the contents: one pipe, two ancient buds of pot that he’d ignored since he’d landed his ‘big’ journalist job. Random drug testing was too scary for him to risk it—it wasn’t something he wanted on his record, ever—but right now the house was scarier. Not scarier. He wasn’t scared. But it was freakier. Was harder for him to deal with than any hypothetical drug test.

The lighter was old and took a few tries to light but Erik got it in the end and smoked very quickly, probably more quickly than was strictly effective. But this was not how he wanted Charles to find him. He thought the man was too worldly too be much disgusted by drug use, but in a perverse way the man was also hyperactively professional (when he wasn’t hitting on his handler). Erik didn’t for a moment think the man would be anything but disgusted to find Erik puffing away _on the job_ like some cheap high school dropout. He couldn’t risk that. He was counting very highly, after all, on the man sleeping with him that night.

He didn’t even waste time cleaning out his pipe afterwards like a good druggie. He clamped the lid back on and shoved the whole mess under the seat again and then shoved past his wallet in the glove compartment (pausing to extract some cash for pizza) and grabbed some cologne, spraying himself down more than was strictly proper.

Only then could he relax. He sat on the seat, muck boots scuffing in the gravel. He closed his eyes and let his body warm in the sun, let his head fill, weighted and full, heavy and cottony. That was nice. Yes…the pot might be old, but it was definitely still potent. And relaxing.

But Erik wasn’t afforded much time to enjoy it before Charles was shouting at him again.

“Oi! What are you doing out there! I need help setting up these cameras!”

Grimacing in disgust, Erik sat up, but was saved from actually doing any such thing by the pizza truck pulling up to the bridge over the creek and honking desperately. It was apparently piloted by a total towner: too distrustful of the Gone-Away House to even pull into the driveway.

Standing, Erik waved off Charles’ request and walked down, only slightly unsteadily. The horizon jounced up and down up and down as he walked and Erik found himself grinning dumbly. It had obviously been too long since he’d last smoked and now he was acting like a complete idiot. Had to get this under control…Charles wasn’t unobservant enough to not call him out, acting like this.

The driver was some speckle-faced teenager Erik didn’t bother to recognize who noticed Erik’s herb perfume right away, even under his cologne.

“I didn’t know you partied,” the kid smiled, obviously about to offer to hook him up.

“I don’t!” he snarled, and tossed the kid some bills to shut him up, snatching their piping hot food.

Charles waited excitedly on the porch, shaking with joy at the sight of grease and Dr. Pepper like a dog at a bone.

He better be fucking serious about sleeping together because there was simply no goddamn way Erik was sleeping by himself in this house. If it came to that, he _would_ abandon the man to this freakshow, out of pure spite and not look back once, the hard-hearted tease.


	15. Chapter 15

“Do you always pig out so abominably in front of men you’re trying to seduce?” Erik questioned, grimacing as the man wrestled the pizza and soda away and cavorted them to the swing bench like a rabid animal dragging fresh meat back to its den.

Charles shook his hair back with his nose in the air, sitting daintily, barely managing to put his expensive camera out of the way of the flying grease.

“You have not yet begun to see me pig out,” he replied in rich tones around a mouth full of garlic bread and cheese.

When Erik kicked off his boots and tried to sit himself down to pig out, too, the man slid his legs across the entire expanse of the bench and glared at him.

“You take your reek of an abomination to the other side of the patio, please, before you force me into bulimia,” the Brit growled, pushing his veggie pizza at him. It made his spine shiver that the man could growl so politely.

He didn’t let on, though, just grabbed Charles by the ankles and pulled the man’s legs off the bench, slipping beneath them and depositing them in his lap as he sat, balancing his pizza box on the man’s shins and grinning through the sun at him. It was so bright he could only manage to look for a moment before he had to settle for assuming that the brunet wasn’t pissed at him and turn away. The sun would be below the tree line soon, hopefully. Even if it wasn’t, he preferred a face full of sunlight to eating in that nausea-inducing house.

“Mind if we eat and interview?” he questioned, manhandling his H2 out of his pocket and dropping it on the bench beside Charles’ knees.

“I suppose we must,” the man cleared his throat to say, twisting to pour himself a cup of soda. He liked the strain in Charles’ legs in his lap as the man struggled to balance himself as he poured his drink. He couldn’t resist the temptation to check out the man’s ass as he did so. God damn but the man had one nice backside.

He blinked the pain and sunspots away from his eyes and pressed record on the H2.

Then he blanked out trying to think of something to ask besides “So, do you like to top or bottom? Because that ass it too gorgeous to waste on you topping.”

He considered going for his notebook in his back pocket, which was filled with interview questions, but unfortunately all the questions were variations on “Why are you so stupid?” “Are you sad that you’re so stupid?”

“You could ask me about the show,” Charles grinned at him. He couldn’t see the man grinning at him with that spotlight sun in his eyes, but it was very clear from his voice.

He took a bite of pizza as if that were the reason he hadn’t come up with anything yet and eventually said, “What’s...have you ever heard something during your research? I mean...do ghosts even talk?”

“I think so. I have things on tape that are definitely supernatural, which I’m very proud of. But there are actually plenty of times I’m sure I’ve heard something but I just don’t have the data to back me up, so it’s rather a waste. That’s really the most frustrating thing: when I know something’s going on but just don’t have it on record. That’s fairly maddening.”

“What did you hear?” Erik asked avidly, wishing he could withstand the light enough to look at the man. Instead he looked at Charles’ shoe-laces beside him on the bench, tracing their pristine lines. God, was he high? He didn’t feel very high but he’d never fingered someone’s shoelaces before. Shit, had Charles noticed?

“We’ve got this great recording in Massachusetts, and right before the tape cuts out you can distinctly hear someone saying ‘I told her’--it’s magnificent. Before our time with Discovery Channel so it’s not technically on the show. There was this time in Season One the producer is certain you can hear someone say “kill”--but I don’t think it’s very clear. It was while I was talking and you have to separate my voice from the disruption and it’s rather skewed. Not impossible, though, so I let them include it.”

Erik thought about the voices in the vent even though everything in his body screamed at him to not think about it.

“Could there be any other reason for something like that? Like infrasound or whatever?” Pizza seemed to have appeased the man into seeing this as a legitimate question and not an attack.

“There are permutations that could maybe make you think that you had heard something you hadn’t--the human mind is an amazing organ. But none of those things could make you get something on tape that didn’t exist. The most you could say is that I’m a liar and my team is made up of liars and we fake things onto tape that never happened.”

Erik knew better than to say any such thing. He pet the man’s shin in as conciliatory a manner as he could manage and said quickly, “That’s ridiculous, of course. You’re a pillar of professionalism.”

“Good boy,” Charles chuckled back to him, rubbing his leg against Erik’s stomach for a second as a reward.

Erik _felt_ that he knew what he’d heard, but who could trust one’s feelings around infrasound? Maybe he _had_ imagined it. The tape would tell. If the team found something on his H2 he’d _know_ he’d heard something real, something terrifying. There was no point in thinking about it at all until then.

“Why don’t you tell me about your team,” he grumbled, and Charles acquiesced.

He got the gloriously dull history of the team being put together (a bunch of paranormal dorks meeting on forums constantly and then being teased by Charles’ sister into starting a research group (or, as she had phrased it, “Ghost Club”).

“I didn’t know you had a sister,” Erik said, surprised. He chanced a quick glance and the man was grinning at him, head leaned against the arm of the bench.

“Yes, well,” Charles teased. “You’ve only known me for about twelve hours so I can’t say that I’m surprised there remain patches of my past still hidden to you.”

Blushing, Erik hoped the man would put it off as sudden sunburn rather than his actual embarrassment.

“What’s she like?”

“You’ll meet her tomorrow so I suppose I shouldn’t bias your judgment,” Charles laughed and Erik liked the way it shook through his whole body, through his calves and into Erik’s own thighs. He dropped his pizza box to the ground and accepted Charles linen handkerchief, dark blue, to wipe his hands clean, shoving it into his own pocket when he was done. He might never give this memento back.

“Give me something to work with. Is she older or younger?”

“Younger.”

“What does she look like? Is she pretty?”

“Why, are you interested?”

Erik grinned at the porch and said, “Does she look like you? I’ve never been interested in women, but who knows? Maybe I’ve just found my gateway girl.”

“…She’d have to look like me to entice you?” Charles questioned softly and Erik didn’t need to look to see the kind of gaze he was getting. He felt his blush crawl all the way down his throat. He tried to shrug it off but wasn’t sure of the success of the maneuver.

“Didn’t you bring me a cup? Or did you plan on hogging all that carbonized sugar to yourself?” he coughed.

“You seemed to look down upon the practice of drinking soda so wholeheartedly that I was sure I would have to fend you off from throwing it into the river as opposed to drinking it yourself. Excuse me if this led me to leave you out of my grab for glasses.”

Frowning, Erik eyed the door. How much did he want a cup? Enough to go back inside alone? He’d have to walk past the basement door...twice, technically.

Firmly decided, Erik reached over and grabbed Charles’ cup out of his hand, ignoring the man’s balking as he drained it quickly and handed it back.

“How on Earth do you not have a boyfriend?” the Brit growled. “It boggles the mind, truly.”

“There are only 28 other gay men in this town: not exactly the sort of odds helpful in finding someone serious,” he grumbled back. “You're rich and famous--why are _you_ still single?”

“What can I say? I guess men aren’t lining up for nomadic ghost-hunters with overbearing sisters and an addiction to chess. Who knew?” Charles sighed dramatically.

“I like chess,” Erik mumbled. He couldn’t tell if Charles had heard him--the man didn’t respond; instead he swept his legs from his lap, sitting up and turning off his recorder.

“It’s so nice here,” he sighed heavily, leaning back beside Erik. “So quiet.”

Erik thought he might be changing the subject, but was too distracted to follow up on the idea.

Because now that Erik thought about it, it was very quiet here, even more so than he was used to in the country. He stood up clumsily, leaning into the sun and the patio banister. Shielding his eyes with one hand he tried to look into the forests at the side of the house, but he couldn’t see any birds around here. And didn’t that count as unassailable proof that there was something wrong with the Gone-Away House? What else did Charles need to be convinced? Forget seeing--he couldn’t even _hear_ any birds, which meant there weren’t any around for acres maybe.

What he did hear was the loud click-whirrrr of an expensive camera right behind him.

Charles just looked innocently back at him when he turned to investigate the noise, camera poised to record his backside.

“Did you just take a picture of my ass?” he growled disbelievingly.

Charles just shrugged. “It’s paranormally sexy. Well within the parameters of my research.”

Erik reached to snatch the camera from him but Charles just jerked back and snapped another picture.

“Okay, okay!” the man laughed, capping the lens as he dodged Erik again. “It’s done, it’s done!”

“Delete them!”

“We’re not so modern: this is the film-camera. Hank’s the only one allowed to handle the digital after an unfortunate incident I won't bore you with.”

“You’re burning the negatives before your team gets here.”

Charles ignored him.

“I think it’s time for _dessert_ pizza,” the man cheered, reaching for the box.

“You just ate half a coronary all by yourself,” Erik reminded, sitting down again beside the brunet. “Do you really want to get dessert pizza involved in this?”

“Absolutely! You don’t understand. Once my sister gets here I’ll be lucky if I can sneak a KitKat without her sniffing it out. Essentially, she likes to pretend that I’m diabetic. Or maybe that I’m fat and in need of a diet.”

 _Unlikely,_ Erik mused to himself, eyeing Charles’ slim figure.

“Why don’t you just tell her to fuck off?” he suggested.

“I guess I don’t have your amazing interpersonal skills. Probably another reason I’m boyfriendless. If I had your innate ability to tell people to ‘fuck off’ willy-nilly I’m sure my prospects would no doubt suddenly increase tenfold.”

“Hey, some people genuinely need to be told to fuck off. There’s nothing uncouth about that.”

“She means well,” Charles argued, licking icing off the side of his palm. Erik imagined fully and with great detail doing the same, taking the man by the wrist and swathing the skin there—or maybe along the hollow of his throat, feel the pulse beat against his tongue, taste Charles’ skin—salty but also sweet, of course.

“…What are you doing?” Charles questioned. Erik realized he was holding the man by the wrist.

“Nothing,” Erik growled, letting him go immediately. “Stop licking yourself, for god’s sake.”

“Why, would you rather do it for me?”

It seemed unfair that Charles could tell so easily.


	16. Chapter 16

The sun finally drowned itself off in the treeline, but Erik couldn’t tell completely how he felt about this. On the one hand it meant he got to look at Charles without being blinded; but on the other hand it meant that dusk was approaching fast. And Erik still wasn’t sure what the night was going to bring. Illicit drugs seemed to have calmed him down without boggling his mind the way he remembered in college. Had he done it right? And keeping his nerves under control was only a portion of the equation which would decide how much he hated his overnight.

Was Charles going to stop with this charade and make a fucking move already? Or was he going to have to abandon this cocktease to a ghosthouse for the night to teach him a lesson in putting out? Was he going to be able to get ten yards out of the driveway without imaging those big baby blue eyes crying with torment at the hands of this house or was he going to have to speed back and throw Charles in his trunk to get the stubborn brat away for the night? It was hard to tell at the moment.

Even worse, Erik found it hard to focus on the conundrum on hand while Charles was being so distracting beside him on the bench.

With no direct sunlight to warm them, the air got cold fast, or at least Charles seemed to think so. He pressed in close to Erik’s side as they spoke, his legs tucked half underneath him. His knee was pressed into Erik’s thigh, and his body was hard and warm leaning heavily against Erik’s. It was sweet and coy but was not an overt invitation to start having sex. It was incredibly maddening, made it a struggle to focus on what he was saying.

“You’re just tempting me towards libel,” Erik accused at Charles’ newest divulgence. “Get my tape recorder so it’s a quotable fact.”

The man obeyed laughingly, pulling it up and pressing record, speaking right into the microphone.

“I, Charles Xavier, once got so shitfaced on Kentucky moonshine that they had to find a doppleganger to finish the filming of season 2 episode 4 on time.”

“I don’t know that I’d want to see you drunk. You’re enough of a harlot sober.”

“You’ve seen but a fraction of my harlotness as of yet, Mr. Lensherr,” Charles claimed, lips curling smugly around that damned cinnamon-and-icing “pizza”.

Erik genuinely hoped so, and stole a bite of the dessert in a way he knew was equally coy and inviting. Charles seemed to see it as nothing but a thieving travesty, though, glaring at him and jabbing him in the ribs.

“You have icing on you,” Charles growled vengefully. Grinning, Erik just licked the corners of his lips, decidedly unapologetic.

“Gone?” he questioned, smirking at the brunet. Charles gazed at him for a moment, face soft and almost pitying.  

And then he was suddenly in Erik’s space, sitting up on his knees, turning Erik’s head fully towards him with one lithe hand. Before a thought had time to form beyond surprise, the man leaned in against him and swathed his tongue across his lower lip, stealing his breath away along with the possible dab of icing.

“There,” the man breathed and Erik could feel the warmth of his breath on his face. Then the man shifted away, sitting back on his heels, his hand still warm against the nape of Erik’s neck.

Erik waited for the obvious continuation of that almost-kiss, but it didn’t come. Glancing up at the brunet, the man was watching him like a questionable science experiment. Erik was struck with the hesitancy of that look, as if after all the mutual flirting that had been going on all that day Charles still wasn’t sure what Erik wanted. Maybe the man really was an idiot—who else could feel confused about how Erik planned for the night to go? Who else could be so beguilingly aggressive all day and then suddenly transform into such a shrinking violet? Oh well, he could make one tiny exception.  

Sliding forward, Erik gripped him by his long brown hair and pulled him in for a rough, bruising kiss, swallowing Charles’ grunt of surprise. The shock only lasted a moment before Charles recovered, pushing back against him and climbing right into his goddamn lap.

He couldn’t help but groan as those strong thighs spread themselves over him, as the man gripped him back just as passionately, as if he’d never been the kind of man who could look at someone he desired with a hint of hesitancy, any modicum of anxiety. Charles ground down into him with his hips, and _into_ him with his mouth. There was no putting it off. He’d been staring at that sweet ass for the better part of the day and it was impossible to ignore it now.

He slid his hands down Charles’ body, feeling the strength of his shoulder blades, the straining of his ribs, the curve of his spine and hips, the down further to squeeze that firm ass, grazing his nails over taut thighs that were definitely going to be wrapped around his waist in as much time as it took for him to get them naked.

Except...

He pulled back slightly, knocking his head against the backboard by accident, running his hands thoroughly from the top of the man’s hip bones down through his thighs just to be absolutely sure.

“Char--” That was as far as he got before the man captured his mouth again, biting his bottom lip meanly in chastisement. He was forced to reach up and push the man back by his collar in order to speak.

“Charles, are you...are you not wearing any underwear?” he panted.

He should have known it was silly to ask. The man just grinned at him cheekily, mouth redder than ever and eyes sparklingly bright even in the diminishing sunlight.

“Shall we say I was rather confident that I wouldn’t be needing them?” Charles suggested with coy abandon.

“God, Charles,” he hissed back. And grasping one hand into the man’s hair and the other against an ass that was suddenly apparently swathed only in thin cotton slacks, he lunged up to reclaim those slick lips.

But lunging wasn’t really a good idea in a rocking bench, especially with a full-grown man in one’s lap. The bench seemed to swing out from under him of its own accord, toppling the both of them hard against the floorboards and pizza boxes, where Charles hit the ground with a yelp and a crack of skull.

“Shit!” Erik shouted, rolling to the side before he managed to inflict any more damage by crushing the brunet. Freed up from his weight, Charles groaned pathetically and held the back of his head where it had hit the floor so loudly, curling himself in a tortured ball.

“Fuck, Charles, I’m sorry--are you okay?” he wailed, trying to pull the man’s hands away to see if there was any blood.

“You jerk; that hurt!” the man complained, tossing onto his back to glare at him fully.

“I didn’t mean to--the bench did it--” Charles didn’t allow him to continue to accuse the bench of malfeasance.

“Make it up to me, you lout, or you can bloody well forget the whole night,” he growled like a domineering child. But there was a glint in his eyes that relieved Erik of the idea that the man had brain matter dripping out of the back of his skull.

“What do you want me to do?” he asked, grinning hesitantly. He didn’t want to start pawing at the wounded man on the evidence of an eye-glint. He had been imagining more ridiculous things all day long. And still was, if that bench’s suspected antics were anything to go on.

The man dropped his head back, those chestnut locks splaying out over the gray grain of patio paint, gazing up at him over cheeks still pink and gorgeous with exertion.

“ _Please me_ ,” Charles murmured imperiously, in a voice that was more breath than vibration.

Erik swallowed hard and fidgeted with the renewed vigor of his erection trapped snugly in his pants. Damn but he should have known this man would be the death of him. If he had an ounce of cum left inside him by morning it would be a miracle or a food group.


	17. Chapter 17

He licked his cinnamon-sweet lips and looked the man over greedily. The half-curled hair, the kissed-red lips;,the tight cords of the man’s throat that joined and subducted into the dark hollow of his manubrium, the flat stomach and the angular hips, the strong, fidgeting legs and everything in between them. It was a smorgasbord of sensuality and Erik wasn’t sure where to begin.

Brushing his fingertips across the man’s throat from jaw to collar, Erik slid to lie beside him before leaning over and following the trail of his hand with his lips.

Charles was flatteringly sensitive. He shivered under Erik’s mouth and swallowed back a gasp. It was Erik’s new mission to drive out of him a sigh that _couldn’t_ be swallowed down.

He shifted to the side of throat closest to him, and pressed his tongue momentarily to the drumming pulse point before covering it with his mouth and sucking hard. Charles jerked beneath him, hissing a breath through his teeth. Erik thought he could do better.

While his mouth alternated between gentle bites and rough sucks up and down that neckline, he sent the hand not currently supporting his weight to massage over the man’s shoulder, a sensitive nipple, to brush barely over the ribcage, his stomach. With a rough tug he yanked the shirt out of its precise tuck and teased the barest tips of his fingers over a stomach that tightened reflexively under the feather-light assault.

“Is this a tickle-fight or are you going to show me something good?” the Brit growled breathlessly, twisting beneath his touch.

Erik pulled back and held the man’s hip down roughly, loving the strain of the joint against his palm. Perfection.

Charles stared up at him in the colorful glow of the sunset, his eyes more black than blue and Erik knew for a fact that he’d never seen anything as gorgeous.

Then the brunet was sliding those talented hands through his hair, making his scalp tingle, and was pulling him down into a plying kiss.

Tilting his head at an angle the man pressed up into his mouth, licking his way inside, forcing a groan with the gentle slide of his tongue against Erik’s. He shifted over the smaller man, easing a knee between the man’s legs to hold his weight, a teasing hover that gave him a good angle over the other man but still kept anything fun from touching.

Groaning petulantly into his mouth, Charles fidgeted beneath him, arching up for some kind of contact, anything.

“I said _‘please_ me’--not _‘tease_ me’,” the man huffed at him, pulling his hair slightly.

“If I touched you,” Erik murmured close, so that his lips barely grazed Charles’ as he spoke. He skimmed his free palm down over the folds of Charles’ thin shirt, the buttons over his stomach, the buckle of his belt and the pleats of his pants. “Would that please you?”

His heart thudded hard in his chest watching the man’s lids slide closed as he grazed a knuckle over the outline of his erection in his gray summer slacks.

“Yes,” Charles sighed, arching into his touch and licking his dark lips. “Yes, oh yes.”

Erik didn’t pull away from the man’s writhing pressure, just pushed back, massaging that cock roughly through his pants, shivering at Charles’ wrecked moan and the way his hips shuddered under his touch. He could hear the man’s expensive shoes scraping along the woodwork as he twisted.

And then Charles was yanking him down for a bruising kiss, scraping his teeth over Erik’s lips, sucking on his tongue, licking past his teeth and leaving him breathless and panting. He got the point: that was enough teasing. He dropped his weight into the valley of Charles’ thighs, wrapped an arm around that coiling waist and ground down into the delicious friction of the other man’s body and all it promised.

Charles responded in kind, clutched at the back of his waistcoat and squeezed his skinny hips in the vice of strong thighs. One hand sunk into the fabric at the man’s shoulder and the other scraping furrows into the back of Charles’ thigh, digging fingertips into the flesh of his ass and yanking those hips up to meet his clothed thrusts more forcefully, Erik yanked his mouth away from the smaller man, holding back to hear those heady moans rather than feel them through his tongue.

He got all that and more. He got the gasped pleas, the huffs of his name from those wine-red lips, but he also got the slick sheen of them, the pink flush of cheeks, the fluttering helplessness of eyelashes blocking off eyes somehow all the bluer for the eclipse of a pupil.

Groaning low and scraping hips slow over a heated erection, Erik dropped his head into the other man’s neck, kissing, licking. He scraped the edge of his teeth down the line of the man’s jugular, shocked by the tortured cry and the violent shiver it elicited.

He pulled back and just stared. He’d had no idea that man was capable of making a sound like that, or that he himself was capable of _making_ the man make a sound like that. He dropped back eagerly and did it again, gripping hard into the shuddering body trapped beneath his weight as Charles keened out his name. He could feel the man’s heartbeat drumming erratically against him through clothing that he was all too eager to get rid of at this point.

The sounds coming from the Brit were wasted on these vast outdoors. Erik wanted to bottle them for his own personal use so that not an ounce of them would be squandered.

While he was distracted, Charles shoved a hand into the floorboards and knocked him over, slamming Erik, helpless with surprise, into the patio and straddling him in one fluid motion, pinning him to the ground with a tight grip on both biceps.

“You want to fuck me, don’t you, Mr Lensherr?” the man huffed, grazing very purposefully against his erection. Erik choked back a moan and gripped Charles’ teasing hips. Those glinting blue eyes did not bode well for him, but he was too far gone to think up a lie, no matter the possible consequences.

“Yes, Charles,” he hissed, arching his hips into the weight above him. Charles pulled away, too far for Erik’s hips to reach him, making him keen with frustration.

“We haven’t discussed it, you know. Maybe that pert arse of yours is too sweet to waste on topping?” Charles teased, and Erik’s mind sparked with shock because those words sounded familiar; hadn’t he been thinking about the same thing regarding Charles’ rounded cheeks?

“How about this,” Charles proposed while Erik was busy struggling to think. “Whoever gets to the bedroom first gets to top.”

Erik just blinked up at him.

“You can’t be serio--” but then the man was lunging off him to the door and there was no time to doubt him.

On the one hand Erik thought that this was childish and they should discuss who would get to be on top like reasonable adults. On the other hand he knew that if Charles did get to the bedroom first the man would spend the night with blue balls before he was goaded to accept a do-over.

So as Charles yanked the front door open, Erik cut inside ahead of him. But as he gained purchase on the first step, Charles shoved him out of the way to replace him. Growling, Erik didn’t bother to fight him for the main staircase, sprinting instead to the back one and taking the steps three at a time, the library a blur, he leapt to get his hand on the door handle before Charles could get it.

But there was no Charles to beat out for it.

The hallway was empty.


	18. Chapter 18

The hallway was dim with the approaching dusk, and the silence of the house was oppressive in Erik’s ears. Mouth dry, heart hammering erratically at his sternum, he swallowed and tried to speak, to call out, but nothing could get past the knot in his throat. He made a choking noise, body so tense it was painful, and was just about start fully hyperventilating when Charles’ mussed brown mop of hair poked itself around the corner.

“Oh,” the Brit chimed happily. “You won. Good on you, old boy.”

Erik funneled all his useless terror into ire.

“How do you feel about spanking, you dick, because I’ve got half a mind to take you over my knee!” he snarled, shoving the bedroom door and pointing Charles inside with as much wrath as an index finger was capable of mustering.

The man’s gait was as sultry as ever, completely unfazed by Erik’s rage.

“I said you could top me, not beat me, you heathen,” the man huffed, nose in the air as he walked past. Before those hips could get away from him Erik slapped his ass hard, making him yelp and jump. He was damned well fazed now, the bastard.

“That’s quite enough!” Charles wailed at him, hands fending him off as he prowled forward and Charles retreated with a flush and grin, blocked off by the bed. “It was just a joke!”

“Do I look like I have a sense of humor?” he growled back, swiping out again and connecting loudly with Charles’ right flank. The man yelped anew, cutting off when Erik grabbed him by the shirtfront and muffled the sound with his mouth, pressing his tongue inside and rubbing the man’s ache away with a strong hand to his ass.

Charles collapsed out from under him onto the bed and Erik shivered to see the burning heat of the brunet’s eyes as he shifted, crawling backwards across the mattress, scraping a soled instep against Erik’s thigh as he did so.

“You got yours, now I get mine. Take your clothes off, Mr Lensherr. Unwrap my present for me,” the man grinned up at him, dropping his head into the cradle of his interlaced fingers. This pulled his shirt up, showing off a sliver of skin between his belt buckle and his wife-beater and making Erik’s mouth water.

He swallowed back the rush of saliva and smiled back widely before sliding one knee along the outside of Charles’ thigh as he shifted onto the bed, straddling the smaller man’s hips as he unbuttoned his waistcoat.

“God, why did I leave my camera downstairs?” Charles hissed, reaching out to caress his fingertips over the angles of Erik’s hipbones.

“You’ll have to take a mental picture." He tossed his waistcoat away and bent down, taking Charles’ face in his hands and tilting it so he could just barely brush his lips over the other man’s. He gasped when Charles gripped his ass hard.

“Remember our deal,” he reminded gruffly.

“I haven’t forgotten,” Charles murmured against his lips, tugging, trying to get his weight on top of him. “Take your clothes off, please.”

Erik shook his head.

“Your turn,” he replied, moving a hand to deal with Charles’ shirt buttons while the other held the Brit still by the hair and ravaged his mouth. He didn’t bother being gentle, definitely ripped a few of the buttons free when he couldn’t slip them out. Charles didn’t seem to mind (although if he did he would have had a hard time saying anything about it with Erik commandeering his mouth).

Last button grappled loose, he knelt up to witness his handiwork.

Charles’ mouth was slick with his saliva, panting and harassed. His throat was marked up to high heaven, making Erik grin proudly. Chest heaving trying to suck in breath, the man blinked up at the ceiling trying to figure out where Erik had gone to. He found him when Erik started yanking the dress shirt off his back, literally, pulling it off his shoulders. He got it most of the way off before he remembered to unbutton the cuffs, growling peevishly when he realized his mistake.

“Please leave them intact,” Charles requested smugly, rolling his hips enticingly under Erik’s weight.

Erik did try, but it was a difficult task, made more difficult by distraction.

“Do you smell smoke?” he questioned suddenly, sure that he did—or, rather, sure that he thought he did. He glanced back at the open door, but didn’t see anything. Under him, Charles just laughed.

“Why, because I’m on fire? We’re already in bed together, Erik, you needn’t waste your cheesy pick up lines on me.”

And with that, the man shoved him over onto his back, clamoring up on top of him and tugging impatiently at his trousers’ hook-and-bar impediment.

“Now, let’s see what we’re working with here,” he murmured excitedly, looking like a kid at his birthday party.

Erik wanted to argue that he wasn’t joking, but Charles was writhing between his legs, breathing against his crotch impatiently as the clasp and then the inner button both finally came loose. Fuck it—he’d burn to death—whatever.

Erik moaned wantonly as the man unzipped his pants using only his talented mouth--breathing hot against him.

Then Charles pulled back, staring at him eagerly as he dug both hands into his waistline and yanked his pants and underwear down to his thighs in one quick tug.

“Oh. My. God,” Charles hissed, his breath raking against Erik’s sensitive and twitching skin.

He glanced down nervously. Was that a good exclamation or a bad one? He knew, of course, he was outside the realm of normality when it came to his appendage, and there were always some people who weren’t up for hopping on that bandwagon. Erik had started out his gay career with an unalloyed desire to top until he had figured out that with his anatomy he’d have more takers if he learned to like bottoming.

He had, but that didn’t mean he’d be thrilled with Charles shying away from his overachieving cock and reneging on their deal.

“Is that good or bad?” he questioned nervously.

The brunet simply beamed back at him.

“This is the best early Christmas present anyone has ever given me,” Charles explained, and then smiled down at his straining erection and turned reverent. “Oh thank you, sweet baby Jesus, for making such a glorious penis. You truly are a gracious God.”

Erik twisted with the man’s lips just beginning to brush over him, so scarcely that he could have imagined it. He still managed to growl, though. “Baby Jesus had nothing to do with my cock! Stop that!”

“Oh I give thanks before You, Living and Eternal King,” Charles chanted until Eirk cut him off with a wail.

“Quit it! Get up here if that’s all you have to say.”

Instead Charles caressed his cheek over his lengthy erection, maddeningly gently.

“Oh sweet cock,” the Brit sighed to it, kissing it like a long-lost friend. “I’m sorry I blasphemed against you and said you belonged in a matchstick museum. Can you ever forgive me?”

Erik would be choking back laughter if he weren’t already choking back tears at Charles’ teasing treatment, barely brushing over the thing, pinning his hips down so he couldn’t thrust up harder.

“Leave my cock alone if you’re not going to do anything worthwhile with it!” he said, shoving himself up onto his elbows to properly shout at the man.

Charles reached up and put one hand over his face, pushing him back again.

“Quiet, this doesn’t concern you,” he insisted, lying his head down on Erik’s bare hip as if he’d converse with his cock all night. “This is between me and my new love. Does it have a name? Could I name it?”

Keening, Erik dropped back onto his shoulders, covering face in his hands bitterly. He had never seen sex as a venue for comedy and he now understood why: it was simply too sensitive an area to introduce fun-loving teasing into. He wanted _sex_ , not a night at the Apollo. Maybe tomorrow he’d be able to look back on this with good humor, but at the moment he wanted his cock coupled with a sensation, not a conversation partner.

“Stop that immediately. I'm serious. Whatever our safe word is, I'm saying it now,” he growled, and Charles finally tore his eyes away from his cock, glancing up at him with a grin.

“So serious, Mr. Lensherr! All right.”

And with that the man gripped him securely around the base and swallowed him down.

Erik couldn’t help it, he cried out, arched into that wet heat of a mouth and hoped he hadn’t hurt Charles. He had to be careful with this thing--he couldn’t just thrust around impetuously, whenever he felt like it.

But the Brit didn’t pull away or gag, just bobbed him in even deeper, working hard to apparently get down to the base of him while Erik looked on in awe at the prospective accomplishment, at the stretch of the man’s so-red lips and the hollow of his cheeks, the tautness of his jaw as he sucked him hard, almost studiously.

Part of the way down and the man pulled back, sucking at the tip of him, tongueing away precome before dipping back down, farther than last time, rolling his throat and making Erik pant like an Olympic swimmer.

He squeezed his eyes shut and put all of his focus into not arching himself deeply down the Brit’s throat, so there was no focus left over to keep himself from moaning, which he did embarrassingly loudly.

It didn’t help that Charles wasn’t satisfied with driving him mad with just his mouth. While one hand was busy clutching him tight around the base, shifting up and down the shaft lazily, the other scratched into the curve of his spine, into the soft flesh of his ass, into the groove between buttock and thigh. The lithe fingers chaffed the inside of his thigh, squeezing and then caressing.

He choked, feeling himself at the back of Charles’ throat, eyes falling open in surprise and—

And he could see his breath.

He grunted in surprise and Charles moaned back to him, making his spine clench even as confusion stole some points from ardor. With each puff of air he could see the ghostly gray-white smoke of his breath in the air, and yet he wasn’t cold at all—was even a little too hot.

“Charles,” he groaned, grasping for the man’s shoulder. “Charles, look.”

The brunet pulled off him with surprise, brow furrowed. “What?” he questioned. Erik tried to make it happen again, but it didn't seem to be as strong now; Charles grinned, mistaking his meaning. “Ohh—I know what you want.”

And falling back to work even more energetically than before, the brunet looked up at him through his eyelashes and Erik had to dig his hands into the mattress to anchor himself against the urge to fuck away at that mouth. Those eyes glinted playfully. _Watch this,_ they seemed to say. And Erik was watching, he’d never be able to tear his eyes away from watching. Until Charles went from impish to determined and sucked him down all the way to the hilt as practiced as if they’d been doing this for years, nuzzling into the dark stiff hairs. Erik’s eyes rolled back and it took every ounce of his control to not thrust up, to not come down that hot throat.

When the Brit pulled back completely, eyes more black than blue, licking saliva and precum off swollen lips and pumping Erik’s cock just because he could, it was more than he could bear.

He lent a hand to squeeze himself around the hilt of his taut erection, willing himself to get a handle on this situation before he embarrassed himself.

“I think it’s time for a condom,” Charles murmured, nuzzling into his body as if he owned the place.

Erik only blinked up at the blank ceiling, arranging prepositions alphabetically and trying to force himself into a state in which he wouldn’t spontaneously come.

“Where are they?” he huffed when he could speak again. He could send Charles for them, he knew, but a few moments alone would do him some good. Charles shivered happily and leapt up to all fours, kissing him harshly and eagerly.

“Bathroom,” he said, kissing between words. “In my bag.”

Erik took a deep breath and slipped out of from under the brunet, dragging the man’s bags from the bed to the floor as he stood, limping to the bathroom.

“I’ll wait for you, shall I?” Charles asked cheekily, rolling onto his back and caressing himself through his tight slacks.

“Don’t get too far ahead of yourself,” Erik warned.

* * *

 

The toiletries bag was sitting on the counter and Erik rifled through it, trying to ignore his painfully erect cock, still slick with saliva. He wondered if it might not be better to just work this one out himself and then do Charles right, but who knew if Charles would be willing to stick around for a round two? It seemed more likely that the man would meet his initiative with an imperious: “You want to do it yourself? Fine, do it yourself the rest of the night. Have fun in the guest room.” And Erik couldn’t risk that.

So he examined the man’s electric razor and mini shaving gel; he read the properties of Charles’ whitening toothpaste; he flipped through the various types of condoms represented like a UN summit of prophylactics in a zipped compartment.

There was lubricated, which Erik loathed, ribbed, which Erik loved, glow-in-the-dark, which confused him, and  even some strange condom with a colorful logo he had only ever seen on women’s purses, which he wasn’t sure what to make of. He found a suitable Magnum, which someone, Charles he supposed, had drawn a heart on in permanent marker. Grinning, he nabbed it and a couple plastic slips of travel-lube.

He was just working on getting the damn thing open when he felt the cupboard door tap open against his shin.

Backing up enough to look down, two gray eyes stared back at him from the shadows of a black charred face, flaking ash as it came at him.

He slammed backwards away from the figure slowly emerging from the cupboard, now a naked burnt shoulder, an arm, and hand reaching towards him, ash, ash flaking everywhere, the smell of burnt flesh, the taste of it in his mouth as he screamed.

He lunged for the door, shoving his full weight against it for his life but the wood wouldn’t come loose from its frame and he could hear the creak of the cupboard door opening farther, the scrape of the thing sliding from its hole, the charcoal scratch in his ears of the thing crusting up against itself. Screaming, pounding to be let out, he could feel the creature getting closer, feel himself hyperventilating and on the point of passing out and he didn’t want to pass out in here with that, didn’t want to be alone with that--he screamed for Charles and then the man was there, forcing the door open and catching him when he collapsed through it, scrabbling to get away.

“The cupboard,” he gasped through a throat quickly constricting against air flow, shoving his rescuer forward into a completely empty bathroom, the cupboard door wide open and a half-opened condom and packets of lube strewn on the floor.

“What? What’s wrong with the cupboard?” the man balked, panicking at Erik’s state. He had to hold himself up by the doorframe. His legs were trembling too hard to sustain his weight.

“There--it was there--in the cupboard!” he cried, voice strangled. He struggled to massage it into working order but his hand was shaking so hard.

Charles was confused, obviously, but dropped down to kneel in front of the thing, peering in too closely for Erik’s tastes. He couldn’t manage anything more disciplinary than a nervous keen though. He needed a hand to keep him standing.

“Erik, there’s nothing,” Charles said, sitting back on his heels and looking up at him anxiously. Then a spared glance, less anxious and more despondent, for Erik’s cock, completely flaccid now and how could it not be after something like that?

Blushing hard, he shoved himself back into his pants and glared down at the man.

“I saw it,” he growled. “I know what I saw.” But he didn’t sound as sure of the second sentence--because what the fuck had he seen? Those gimlet eyes gleaming at him, the taste of it still in his mouth, the scrape still prevalent in his ears of the thing sliding out of his hole coming after him.

“I ca-an’t--ca-a,” he hyperventilated, backing away, trying to shake the vision and every other sensation from him but they pressed in close on his mind, constricting and claustrophobic. He scrabbled at his throat, trying to work a way to breathe, but Charles pulled it loose, unbuttoning the first few buttons of his shirt and fanning him.

“I can’t--” he gasped as if the air had been knocked out of him, skin burning hot but chilled at the same time.

“Come on--fresh air,” Charles insisted, dragging him to the window, but Erik dragged back. He didn’t want a window, he wanted a door, an _exit_.

“I can’t stay here,” he mustered enough breath to growl, yanking his arm out of Charles’ grip and backing up towards the door. But he couldn’t go alone. He couldn’t be anywhere in this house alone, it seemed. “Please,” he gasped, reaching towards the smaller man and the man reached back, taking him by the hand, wrapping his free arm around Erik’s waist. He realized he was still shaking hard, but he felt better with Charles’ scent replacing the taste of charred flesh in his mouth.

“Come on,” Charles murmured, rubbing his back. “I’ll take you home.”


	19. Chapter 19

The drive back was rough. He was too shaken to manage a car and hardly audible enough to give Charles directions. It was too dark and when he put the light on inside, Charles complained that he couldn’t see. The man didn’t flip it off, though, which he appreciated. It was dark enough outside of the car without the inside being dark, too.

He locked the doors and sat sideways in his seat so he could keep an eye on the backseat at the same time. He ignored Charles asking what he had seen because it was too dark to talk about it safely and he didn’t breathe easy until they reached the lights of town, able to point Charles to his loft without sounding as if he were hypothermic.

Relief only really hit him, though, once he was through his own front door. His kitchen, his small dining room table, his leather couch with the wrought-iron-and-glass coffee table. Everything was familiar and safe and nothing was out of place or coming to get him. He was safe here.

Dread still managed to seep through, though, when he noticed that Charles didn’t follow him in, or copy his act of taking off his mud-caked footwear.

Turning to stand with the man in his door frame, he shifted nervously.

“Are you going to be okay?” Charles asked him, holding his hand.

Erik smiled wanly at the comforting act, nodded. But then Charles let him go.

“I’ll just catch a cab back, then. I’ll have my phone on me, so feel free to call if you need anything--anything at all. My number’s in your dossier.”

Erik lunged and caught the man by his unbuttoned shirt as he turned to leave.

“Where are you going?” he trilled, getting a better grip with both hands fisting the fabric at the man’s sides.

Charles stared down at his grasp and then back up, eyes wide.

“Well...back to the house! Someone has to monitor it for the night. And I have to find whatever it was you saw...”

Erik couldn’t control his shaking past the first sentence, shivering down to his bones at the thought of Charles in that house alone with that thing, _searching_ for it--that thing from under the--he couldn’t even think of it-- _he refused to think of it_.

“You ca~an’t--” he hyperventilated. “You _can’t--_ ”

“Erik!” the man exclaimed, obviously worried at his reaction, trying to still Erik’s palsy by holding him close to his chest. Erik held him back tightly, refusing to let him go back to that house. He _had_ to think of a way to keep him from the house.

But his mind wasn’t in working order and only one idea could slog its way through his panic. Luckily it was one that had all the hallmarks of success.

“Please,” he begged, holding Charles’ solid weight hard against his shaking body. “Please stay. I need you. Please.”

No way was Charles hard-hearted enough to turn that down.

Sure enough, the smaller man stroked his back and spoke into his skin.

“Of course...of course if you want me to stay I’ll stay...”

Sighing again, he slipped loose, dragging his exhausted body up to bed.

Charles kicked off his shoes and followed him up. There were no sexual undertones as Erik stripped down to his boxers and fumbled his way into his high school sweatpants and sweatshirt, at least not for him. Charles must have not been provoked too badly by the scene because he only asked if he could borrow his laptop, not if he could fuck him.

“It’s downstairs in the office. You can set it up anywhere. The password is ‘thwhite’--all lowercase. No punctuation,” Erik huffed as he collapsed into bed, wanting nothing more than to sleep for years, sleep until that house had burned down to cinders, until the earth had swallowed it up off the face of the earth.

He didn’t think he’d ever felt so exhausted in his life. Maybe after his mother’s funeral. He was still shivering even with his heavy covers and sweats. He thought about turning off the air-conditioning but didn’t want to get up.

“Okay...um, would it be all right if I borrowed some pajamas? Only, my bag’s still at the House…”

Erik shuddered at even the mention of it, refusing to think about it.

“Take whatever you want,” he grumbled, squeezing his eyes shut and trying to fall asleep quickly. Unconsciousness couldn’t come fast enough for him. Why didn’t he have any sleeping pills in the house? Or heroin? He wondered if Charles was capable of punching someone in the head so hard that they passed out. Even if the man _were_ capable of it, Erik didn’t think he had the energy to convince him to actually do it. Damn.

* * *

Erik realized his mistake as soon as Charles left the room.

Because without Charles there, it was just him and his thoughts, and not even his thoughts but the sort of rampant imagination that hadn’t plagued him this cruelly since he was young enough to be afraid on camp-outs.

Just as when he was seven and his brain would try to convince him that a man-eating bear was going to drive its claws through his tent to cut him up, his brain now wouldn’t let him stop imagining that face--that burnt scorched face, staring at him from the shadows of the cupboard, the gleaming gunmetal gray eyes staring into him.

It forced him to imagine those eyes peering at him from the edge of his bed. He’d never loathed his furniture set up so much before: with his bed jutting into the middle of the room there were three sides for that face to peek at him over. His brain didn’t stop there, either, proving itself a better imaginarium than he had ever suspected. He seemed to be able to hear the rasp of the creature’s dead breath, feel the weight of its attention and even its _touch_ on him, taste its ash in his mouth, smell the cooked reek of its flesh.

He only managed to survive a few minutes of the traumatizing onslaught before he jumped from the bed the same way he had as a child, aiming to get far enough away from the furniture so that nothing could reach out from under it and grab him.

Charles was sitting at the dining room table with his laptop, typing away single-mindedly. Even with his back to the staircase, though, he heard Erik coming, twisting in his chair to stare at him questioningly. Erik saw that the man had raided his linen closet and set up a bed on the couch. He hoped Charles wasn’t too devoted to that idea.

“Sorry, am I keeping you up? I’m nearly done,” the Brit said. He was dressed in Erik’s clothes, a pair of flannel pajama bottoms and a heavy sweater he thought he’d donated.

“Can you sleep up there with me?” he asked before he’d planned on what to ask, approaching close. He held the man by the shoulders, felt better with him in hand, more certain of what was real and what wasn’t. “I mean, did you _want_ to sleep on the couch?”

“I...I don’t mind. I can sleep with you,” Charles coughed, holding his hands back over his collarbones.

Relieved, Erik huffed out a breath and leaned down, resting his forehead in the crown of Charles’ hair and just breathing him in for a second to cleanse his palate.

“I’ll just finish this email real quick, okay?” the man murmured, chafing his hands before going back to typing, faster than ever.

Tired and feeling as if his mind were finally going to allow him to sleep, Erik turned and slipped down to sit beside Charles’ legs, resting his head on the man’s thigh and closing his eyes.

No images assailed him, just the heat of Charles’ body and the importance of it, of everything Charles’ body meant. He heard the man clicking out of things, and then blunt nails were scraping through his hair.

“Okay,” Charles murmured. “I’m done.”

It was a struggle to get back to his feet, but he managed it with Charles’ help, let the man lead him back upstairs with an arm around his waist and his own arm heavy around the man’s sturdy shoulders.

He was nervous for a moment before Charles climbed into bed with him; only then could he manage to relax into his exhaustion. He moved closer, wrapping an arm around the man’s waist before he remembered that he should probably ask before he did things like this. He wasn’t dating Charles, he hadn’t even slept with Charles. He had no hold on him.

“S’okay?” he attempted to mumble from where he’d buried his face into the man’s woolen bicep.

Charles just let out a breath and stroked his arm under the covers.

Erik was asleep in no time.

 

He dreamt of a door opening to a doctor’s office with three stone wells. A dozen different voices were screaming his name. The room was on fire.

He awoke and it was the middle of the night, still and black, with only the scarce light of the street lamps seeping through his blinds.

He could hear his own breathing in the dark, and Charles’, slower, calmer.

Turning and pushing himself up on an elbow he looked down at his temporary bed-partner, shaded in blue and black. The man slept on his side with his legs bent in front of him. One arm hidden under his pillow, the other rested lax on the dark sheets and Erik stared at it for a moment just memorizing the shaded planes of it, the dusk to navy pallet.

He dropped back to the bed, shifted his legs so his knees pushed against Charles’ calves, buried his face in the nape of the other man’s neck where the duvet trapped the homey smell of him. He put his arm around the other man’s waist under the heavy covers, pulling the hips back against his stomach so he could feel Charles warm and heavy against him from his head down to his shins.

The brunet stretched in his arms, waking at the contact.

“Are you okay?” Charles whispered, turning, and his shoulder was a comforting pressure against Erik’s jaw.

The other man pulled his arm away, turned completely in the circle of it and tangled their legs together. He put his arm under Erik’s neck and wrapped it around his shoulders, pressing Erik’s face into his own throat. The comforting scent of the man was even more pronounced here, or maybe the comfort stemmed from the free hand carding through his hair, the warm weight of an arm around his shoulders, the soft, murmury voice repeating “Shhh, it’s okay, you’re okay, shhhhh, shhhhh.”

Erik held him around the waist again and fell back asleep.


	20. Chapter 20

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just wanted to thank all of you for reading and reviewing. I'm so happy that you guys like this story, despite the fact that I'm the worst person ever for not updating as regularly as I normally do. I'm reworking and rewriting bits and pieces of this as I go and I think replacing is even more difficult than just writing from scratch! Anyway, I appreciate you guys so very much and, as a treat: here's lots of porn. I was going to split this chapter into 2 parts since it's so huge, but...yeah. It's kind of hard to split a sex scene in half...  
> Enjoy!

Erik woke up because someone was staring at him, and, because of this, adrenaline jerked him straight from dreaming into tense wakefulness so quickly he felt dizzy and sick.

He was right, someone _was_ staring at him.

Charles, propped up on an elbow, grinned down at him shamelessly in the weak, watery sunlight. It must still be very early.

Shaking a sigh free, Erik relaxed back into the pillows, rubbing the grit from his eyes.

"You were talking in your sleep," Charles explained happily, reaching over and rubbing his hair affectionately. "You were saying my name."

Alert again, Erik stared up at the bright-eyed man, not sure what he should make of this or what Charles made of it.

The Brit grinned joyfully, lips as red as Erik remembered. "You said it in an incredibly creepy voice, too. Gave me shivers." To give an idea of what he meant, Charles croaked long and wavery: " _Chhhhaaaarrrrsssss_."

"Your name is Chars now, huh?" he croaked back.

"I'll work on your pronunciation a bit later, my little Pygmalion."

Laughing, Erik pushed at him half-heartedly, surprised that he was still capable of laughing after everything. Charles caught his hand easily, pressing it to his throat for a moment before leaning over Erik's body and then slipping his palm down under the covers and cupping Erik's interesting bits through his sweats.

"Were you having a wet dream of me, Mr. Lensherr?" the man murmured, licking his dark lips and goading him to hardness with deft fingers.

Erik huffed a breath, considered telling Charles he was too tired. He _was_ tired. But more than his fatigue was the intense desire to push off reality just a little bit longer. He wanted to forget for as long as it was possible, and if Charles was offering himself up as a distraction then what was the harm in it?

So he turned towards the brunet, towards the shadow of ginger stubble he could see on Charles' jaw and the underside of his chin, towards the cords of his throat and the deep red of his lips.

Charles noticed, jerking his eyes up from where they were staring at the bumps and grooves his ministrations were making in the comforter. His hand stilled as he stared, almost surprised, into Erik's eyes, his own so blue even in the dimness of the gray sunrise. Erik reached up, caressing the gentle hollow of his cheek, the stubble barely catching at the ridges of his fingertips. He coaxed the man in close, grazed their lips together, breathed him in.

Beneath the covers Charles moved his hand up, under Erik's sweatshirt, stroking his stomach and his ribs, deepening the kiss but not roughening it; still gentle, still soft. He brushed his tongue against Erik's lips, and then, when Erik parted a path, against Erik's own tongue, making him shiver-either from that or from Charles' fingertips grazing a nipple, he wasn't sure.

Groaning slightly, Erik arched into his touch, and Charles reciprocated, moving closer, slipping a leg between Erik's and grinding unhurriedly against his hip, nails catching at his chest.

If the man was going to rut against him he could at least do it where he was helpful. Erik glided an arm around his waist and shifted him over so he was pressed completely over Erik's body, didn't release him but pulled him in tighter so he could stretch up into him, the warm weight of him, the delicious friction.

Charles gasped into his mouth, grinding down just as avidly as Erik was arching up, scraping the lengths of their growing erections together inside their respective pajamas. Too many clothes, and too thick. With a quick move he slid a hand down inside Charles' clothes, under his pajama pants and under his underwear, against his hot smooth flesh. But he had thought that Charles wasn't wearing underwear? No, that's right-that was yesterday.

Pulling back, Erik stared up at the smaller man. Whose underwear was he wearing, then?

He didn't bother asking-he'd only get a cheeky response anyway. Instead he reinstated his grip on the man and used it to roll him onto his back and situate himself on top of him, tugging the blankets out of his way and out of their tangle, burying with his longer, bigger, heavier body. The only thing he wanted tangled up in him right now was Charles.

He sat back and dug his hands into the thick wool sweater, yanked it along Charles' twitching frame, up and over his head. He'd seen the man in his thin wife-beater before, just last night, yesterday morning, this was nothing he hadn't had every reason to expect, but he was affected all the same. The hollows of the collarbones and the marks Erik's mouth had put there, the firm chest, the dark rosy nipples, the sparse hair and the flat, soft stomach, all of it beautiful and going straight from his eyes to his brain to his cock.

He dropped down again, adding to the splay of bruises across Charles' throat and collar, expanding their domain even lower.

"Please, god, Erik, please," the man panted, scrabbling his blunt nails under Erik's sweatshirt and against his shoulder, his spine and the back of his neck. He imagined the bright pink marks those nails were scratching into his skin and moaned into Charles' navel. He kissed the man there as atonement for pulling away, even if it was only to peel those flannels off.

He went slowly, not to tease but to taste every moment of it, the slow reveal of Charles' tensed, muscular legs, and his own gunmetal gray boxer briefs dark against Charles' pale skin. He was sure they'd never looked so mouth-watering on him. It helped that he could trace the outline of Charles' straining cock on them, see the darkening dab of precum at the tip, spreading as the man strained against the fabric as his only source of friction.

Jealous still, Erik pulled all the way back into his kneel so he'd have enough room to drag them and the pajamas completely off Charles' muscular legs. He didn't bother to watch where he threw them he was so busy watching the gorgeous spread of skin before him. It was almost too much to process: the preciously faint tan lines far up Charles' legs and low down on his hips, the indents of muscles marked out in the paleness of the coiling hips, and his cock-that lovely fucking cock, beautifully uncut, engorged and leaking and begging to be swallowed, stroked, milked empty.

Before he could act on this desire, the man pushed himself up as well, folding his legs over Erik's thighs and dipping his fingers under his sweatshirt, making a muscle in his stomach convulse reflexively.

"Will you let me?" the Brit murmured, his voice soft and pleasantly pleading. Erik nodded and the man pushed the hem of his sweatshirt up slowly, as if teasing himself, or the both of them, with the gradual reveal.

"You're beautiful," he sighed, as if the fact awed him too much to speak normally. Erik grinned back at him, but he could feel himself blushing all the way down his throat.

"What's better than beautiful? I need an adjective for you, too, now," he replied just as softly, stroking Charles' bare thigh.

"You're the writer," Charles laughed, reaching up and running his fingers back through Erik's hair to the base of his neck. "I'm just a homely scientist."

Shaking his head disbelievingly, Erik moved his hand to the man's naked line of spine and pushed him back into the mattress, adding his weight nestled between two brackets of legs and leaning into a kiss, heart stuttering at the sensation of Charles' pulsing cock pinned smooth against his stomach.

Their arms bumped and tangled in the process of exploring each other's bodies. Erik's hands pressed solidly down the man's sheened torso, his hip, to the back of his thigh and his glorious ass, the slope of his hips leading him on like a rolling stone into the dip of his spine. Charles' skimmed down from his shoulders, down his ribs and over his hips, pushing impatiently and his sweatpants.

Erik got the hint but couldn't refuse one last heavy grind, eliciting a sighing groan from the man trapped beneath him, before slipping away and fighting his underwear and sweatpants completely off.

"Where are your condoms?" Charles rasped, watching him untangle himself as if it were something alluring instead of clumsy.

"Nightstand. The green tin."

Charles was rummaging before he even finished his sentence and Erik found his haste flattering, stroked the man's hips, his stomach, his cock, kissing his shoulder for a moment before Charles turned back over, condom and a bottle of lube gripped slickly.

"Let me do it?" the man requested, using his knee to stroke the inside of Erik's thigh. He nodded, pushing Charles into the bedding and caressing his mottled throat, his shoulders and his chest as he moved to straddle the other man around the thighs.

"You've such a lovely fecking cock, Erik," Charles panted, voice somehow more British in his distraction. Erik's eyes slid shut as the man stroked him, lightly but confidently, just as if they'd been doing this for years and years. He grinned.

"Where's your camera now?" he teased, and remembered that he should be amazed that he was capable of teasing, of being aroused, of being anything but traumatized for life after last night. That had to mean something didn't it? That last night could fall from him like a bad dream had to mean that it couldn't be real.

He forgot it again in the face of Charles' pouting mouth and the sound of a condom wrapper tearing. "On the patio, where it does me absolutely no good," the brunet complained, but his face cleared again at Erik's shuddering intake of breath, a fortifying necessity of Charles' sweet, sure hands rolling the condom down his girth.

"You like that, don't you, Erik? You like my hands on you," Charles accused playfully, sprinkling lube over latex and stroking him with purpose.

"I do," Erik sighed, not bothering with coyness at a time like this. He leaned over to kiss Charles light and gentle, at the same time slipping the bottle of lube away from him and greasing up a few eager fingers.

He had already slipped off Charles to lie at his side, half-reaching between the man's weakly bent legs, before manners worked their way past the fog of lust obfuscating his mind.

"Is this okay?" he looked up to ask. Charles was looking back at him, eyes like deep pools, calm somewhere deep below the moment's turbulence.

"You mean hovering your hand over my genitals?" the Brit asked cheekily. "No, that's really not okay."

Erik tested his theory that the man's mouth tasted sweeter when it was teasing, leaning in and capturing those lips that gasped into him when he pressed his hand onto the man's cock, sliding down slowly to finally rest just barely massaging that puckered hole that would soon be his whole world.

More lube and more kissing and he was pressing slowly but surely inside, awed by how tight Charles was even around one finger. The man clutched his shoulder and tilted his head back to breathe out one long shaking breath, so exquisitely virginal that Erik's cock about cried out with want.

"Are you okay?" he panted.

The man closed those so-blue eyes for a moment, swallowing hard, before saying, "I didn't realize your fingers were so long."

Erik couldn't help but think that if the man was amazed with the length of a finger then maybe they'd never progress to the length of a cock, especially _his_ cock. He pulled back, unsure, but Charles held his bicep, keeping him in place.

"Another, please," he sighed, writhing down onto Erik's digit and squeezing tighter than ever around him, scorching Erik's mouth suddenly dry with the act. Struggling to lick more moisture into his lips, he snatched the lube again and bit Charles' throat roughly, sucking away the ache, as he slid in another finger right along the first, feeling the man's moan vibrate through his lips and set him alight. He knew it was important to prep the man-he _knew_ it-but at the same time he wanted inside him so impatiently and so intensely that it physically hurt.

Panting into the man's chest, he thrust in further through two fingers, sparing enough brain-cells to lust after the way the smaller man writhed beneath him, hands clutching him or the bedspread or whatever he could get a slick grip on. Erik twisted slightly, holding himself up on a free elbow and sliding his mouth over first one and then the other of the man's nipples, licking, lapping and biting as he scissored his fingers apart inside him, stretched them, torqued until with a lucky prod Charles jerked and cried out under him, scratching his shoulder and yanking at the bedcover violently.

"Another," the smaller man begged, reaching over to tug his hair demandingly before dropping it to his own slowly leaking erection. "I need more--please."

Erik shifted down further onto the bed to truly get some strength behind those fingers and added a third, one slow knuckle at a time.

Charles yanked on his shoulder, whining morosely, nearly sobbing with the frustration of his shallow thrusts easing their way only gradually into fully-seated three fingers. Erik did feel bad, but more than that he didn't want to hurt the man, so he ignored Charles' begging and pleading as much as he was able to, balancing enough to stroke the man's leaking cock to attempt to make up for it.

Once he was ensconced up to the last knuckle he thrust with vigor, own body thrumming with Charles' ecstatic cry and the sweet tight clench of that body. He alternated, pulling nearly out and then thrusting all the way back in, or keeping his digits perfectly deep and then pulsing them even deeper. Charles didn't seem discerning--he liked all of it, moaning, panting, arching, writhing. Erik's cock burned with the desire to be inside him, so acutely that Erik couldn't stand it any more.

He pulled away, rolling into the valley of the smaller man's taut legs. Charles didn't complain in the slightest, pulling his hips closer, dragging him down to kiss breathlessly, rocking himself up into Erik's weight, grinding them together in a way Erik had to put a stop to immediately or else risk stopping this party before it started. He escaped enough so they weren't touching, at least not at the points that could get him in trouble.

"Is it okay?" he panted into that kissed-slick mouth, sucking on the lower lip for a second.

Charles swallowed painfully and rasped, "If you don't fuck me _right now_ , I'm going to roll you over and do it myself."

Erik chuckled as much as his lack of breath would allow and massaged the inside of Charles' stretched thigh, feeling the surprisingly erotic tendon between groin and thigh, and, after yet another healthy daubing of lube, directed the globed head of his cock to that tight entrance.

"Oh god," Charles whispered, shivering, eyes sliding closed. Erik leaned over and kissed his parted lips and pressed inside him.

Charles' body was such a vice around him that it seemed as if he'd never work a way further inside than that first inch. Erik was so sure of this fact that he shifted on his arms to pull back, positive that the Brit needed another round of fingering before he'd be able to manage anything past the head of him anytime soon.

But before he could follow through Charles tossed a defiant leg over his hips and held him in place.

"Just give me a minute," the man murmured, eyes closed as he rubbed Erik's shoulders distractedly. He was incredibly flushed, tendrils of it staining his collar and chest gorgeously.

Erik would have argued but at this point he was so far beyond anything outside the scope of fucking Charles senseless that he couldn't really work out what his mouth was supposed to say, and anyway, his body was already following the man's advice, settling back in, giving up on its counterintuitive impetus to pull away.

With a helping hand to feed himself slowly further along the hot path of the man, Erik could forge another inch of leeway, thrusting within the territory he'd won, gaining entrance one bare centimeter at a time but it added up and after a couple minutes he was shaking from head to toe with the glory of being pressed into the man until his short coarse hairs were crushed against his slick body.

Charles pushed up on his elbows, staring wide-eyed at the feat.

"It's so deep," he murmured as if he didn't realize he were speaking, and who knew? At this point maybe he didn't.

Erik changed his mind about this hypothesis, though, when Charles dropped back, staring in confusion at the ceiling, brows quirked expressively.

"I taste...colors?" he claimed and Erik shook with laughter as well as desire. Charles smiled back joyfully and pulled him in for a kiss, the man curling his tongue against his, sucking on it and then his lip.

Erik groaned into that talented mouth and shifted his hips back slightly, sliding them in again, thrilled that Charles was still tight but was no longer so tight as to be a hindrance. The man moaned into his mouth and Erik could swallow it down and taste it, sweeter with each building thrust.

Wanting to be closer, _needing_ to be as close on the outside as he was on the inside, he maneuvered, slipping one arm under the man's thigh and about folding him in half, hitting that spot inside of him that made the man cry Erik's name--even through the expanse of air it seemed that he could feel the vibration of it through his skin and it caused his hips to jerk erratically for a moment before his sense of rhythm returned.

He moved his free arm behind Charles' shoulders, pulling the man in tightly to him even though neither of them had the breath necessary to manage kissing at the moment. Just having him wrapped so close was enough--one leg over his arm, the other spurring his hips on, both of the man's arms around his neck. He arched his back, coiling his way deeper into Charles and watching him moan with it.

Charles rolled his hips back onto Erik's driving shaft, forcing it deeper, harder, than Erik meant it to go, but he couldn't bear to stop enough to amend it. Instead he screwed his eyes shut as Charles' cock rubbed eagerly against his stomach, burning a clear streak of wetness across him. He dug his grip hard into the crease of Charles' thigh where it was bent against his body, dragging the hips in against him since the man seemed to like that so much. Sure enough, the brunet choked out a cry, bucking hard, mussing his hair and dragging him in for a desperate kiss they could hardly manage.

"Please, Erik," the man gasped, apparently unsure if he wanted to be grinding up against Erik's stomach or down onto his cock and so trying to do both at the same time it felt like. "Please, make me come."

Erik realized he wasn't sure how to manage that: with one hand gripped into Charles' thigh and the other slipping in the sweat on the back of the man's neck, that didn't leave a lot of left over appendages to jerk the man off with.

He wondered if he could fuck the man straight into orgasm and the image inflamed him so wholly that he took that as his new personal goal.

Getting a good grip on the nape of Charles' neck, he pulled back against the strain of the man's heel on his spine, slipped out and out and out and then slammed all the way back in.

Charles cried out loudly, jolting in his arms nearly clear out of the bed, falling back into a body that was less bone and more sinew, quivering and twisting under his weight as Erik pressed him into the mattress heavily and slid back to thrust all over again. He arched his back, close to painfully, to rub Charles' cock beneath his heft, but between that and the burn in his thighs and the over-tautness in his gripping fingers and shoulders, it was lost into the loop of converging pleasure and pain.

Moaning into the man's throat he drove harder and harder, shifting more weight back into his hips and snapping them mercilessly, basking in the shrill pealing cries of the man and his panting gasps, the scrape of his scrabbling nails-it all seemed to echo in his ears and his spine and his loins.

"Kiss me, kiss me," the man begged, voice thin and wavery, obviously on edge as Erik didn't so much thrust as dug himself into his body.

As much as he could manage it, Erik followed orders, pushing up and mashing their mouths together, too distracted for finesse. Charles seemed to breathe through him if either of them breathed at all, yanking at his hair and coming hard between them, cum hitting hot and wet against Erik's abs and making him gasp into Charles' mute, working mouth.

Everything of Charles' body went taut in his breathless orgasm, his legs gripping Erik's waist, his arms encircling his shoulders, and especially the slick entrance encasing his cock. Gasping, whining with the pleasurable pain of his own bone-melting orgasm, he wracked out choking breaths of Charles' sweet name and buried himself deep within the other man, orgasm hitting him in wave after wave, crashing over him and whiting him out and breaking him down into a wet, near-sobbing mess collapsed over the brunet.

When his mind came back to him however many minutes later, he realized he was collapsed with the brunt of his weight stifling the smaller man, and pulled away as gently as he could. Charles still grunted softly, either with pain or bereavement, when he pulled out completely, only mostly limp.

It was too much to ask of his muscles to hold him up. He got rid of his condom and immediately collapsed over, giving Charles room to breathe as the man panted and groaned beside him, rubbing his sore ribs with a laugh. When he'd recovered enough, he followed, inserting himself into Erik's arms. It was too hot, and awkwardly damp, but Erik found he didn't mind at all, and pulled Charles even closer. The last thing he remembered was Charles panting into his chest, maybe murmuring something, and then he was asleep again.

* * *


	21. Chapter 21

Somewhere nearby the _X-Files_ theme song started blasting but Erik was just going to bury his head under the pillows and ignore it--until Charles ripped himself away from his side and started scrabbling for it, leaving a long line of freezing cold air against his cozy skin.

Groaning at being forced awake, Erik pulled the blankets securely around him, curling up on his side and glaring at Charles on the phone. It was too energetic to keep up for long and gave up quickly, rubbing his gritty eyes, scrubbing at his aching skull, feeling hungover all over again. They should not have done it twice back to back, he saw it now. It had been too much too soon, leaving him not thrumming with post-coital bliss like the first time but filled with bone-aching exhaustion, like a bad cold, like running a marathon. He now knew what people meant by too much of a good thing. It was apparently the same with too much of a perfect thing.

 “I’m sorry I’m sorry!” Charles was groaning into the phone, pulling at his hair in distress. “I know—I…I overslept. I know! Just let me…um…let me get a quick shower and I’ll be right over there, okay, I swear. With…breakfast! To make it up to you all…Give the team my love. See you soon.”

He hung up then, slamming his phone onto the mattress angrily.

“Fuck! I’m so fecking late! Can I borrow your shower?”

“I have to take a shower, too,” Erik whined back, furrowing his brows into his pillow.

Charles grinned cheekily, walking backwards with decided flirtation.

“Well, come on then—I like sharing.”

 

* * *

“You cannot possibly be up for shower sex,” Charles growled, pulling out of Erik’s hands under the hot flow of water, scrubbing his hair and sweat-stained skin emphatically.

It was true—one more orgasm might kill him—but Erik still felt upset at being accused like this.

“Well why the hell did you invite me for a joint shower then?”

“Because it’s faster!” Charles claimed, grabbing Erik’s shampoo and also Erik, scrubbing him down as well, as if he’d dillydally if he did it himself. “Every second counts. The team’s already setting up without me. I didn’t even have Raven’s film set out, she had to go around scrounging for it all herself. She has to be at the school at nine and Hank’s going to have to take off research to bring her. I could just die! I _never_ slack off like this!”

“You weren’t slacking off,” Erik assured, grabbing the brunet and helping to rinse his hair in retaliation. The locks were strangely erotic, slippery and slick in his fingers. Surely one more little orgasm wouldn’t hurt him… “You were working _very_ hard.”

“I know it,” Charles pouted, but he purred slightly through it. Erik would have considered it an invitation but for the way Charles pushed him away decisively. “I’m going to be sore for weeks thanks to you. Come on, _please_  stop fannying around.”

“What?”

“ _Get a bleeding move on_.”

But how could he get a move on with Charles so gorgeous and wet and naked? Pouting and purring and even begging him, technically, even if it were just to get moving. The bruises he’d left on the man stood out all the more clearly, all along his pale column of throat, spattered across his collarbones, on his chest, on his hip just beside the gently curving bone. The contrast of pale skin and dark hair lit his eyes up even brighter than usual, stained his lips and freckles a darker hue. Charles should be in the shower all the time. This was a work of art. How could the man expect him to rush through this?

“Not you,” Charles growled as he jumped out of the shower, shoving a hand into Erik’s chest to keep him from following. “You need a minute.” And he turned the water straight to freezing.

Erik escaped with a yelp, soaking his bath mat, shivering as he grabbed for his oversized fluffy robe and a soft towel. Charles did nothing but a perfunctory drying job, hair still dripping as he rushed to the closet. Erik thought about taking the towel to him himself but he worried he’d lose a hand to the task. 

“Can I borrow some clothes? Mine are all muddy from yesterday.”

Grumbling, Erik turned off the icy shower and followed Charles’ hyperactive lead. The man was already tugging on a pair of his old ragged jeans over borrowed black boxer briefs. Erik’s cock immediately twitched with interest, regardless of cold water or how much Charles seemed disinclined to deal with his arousal.

“Don’t you have _any_ slacks that aren’t a 22 waistband?” Charles complained, ignorant to his state.

“I’m a 30, and no,” he growled back. “You’re lucky you found those. I thought I’d thrown them out.”

“I suppose all your dress shirts are equally middling,” Charles huffed, scanning his closet. Erik thought he probably did have a dress shirt that would fit—he was broader than Charles across the shoulders, although Charles’ chest seemed more expansive than his own. But he didn’t mention this. The thought of Charles so scruffy and childish in his overlong jeans, maybe an old T-shirt, gaping at the collar, a jacket or sweater hanging over his knuckles—it was all so endearing and _tempting_ that Erik was taken aback for a moment. 

He’d never been interested in the endearment factor of another man before. Men were for sex, not for dress up. He’d never thought about dressing them in his clothes, about their body in his shirts or his jeans caressing their skin…

“I’ll find you something to wear,” his croaked excitedly, running his hands over Charles’ hips through his own jeans. The man pulled away quickly.

“Do you know what ‘late’ means?” Charles growled. “My team is setting up without me. We are behind schedule. We do not have the rest of our lives to get this house examined. Now is decisively _not the time_.” He grabbed his phone and escaped down the stairs grumbling to himself, apparently hoping Erik would be able to focus better without him there to lust over.

It didn’t fully work, only because Erik no longer needed Charles immediately at hand to lust over him. Charles had a life all his own inside Erik’s mind and he lived there with just as much vibrancy and clarity as in reality, a new development at once startling and exciting.

Today was a new day, but it felt like a whole new lifetime. Stretched before him was something pale and luminous, and stretched back behind him was a path winding and umbral. What had changed to create this light? Was it simply sleeping with Charles? Surely that couldn’t be it. He had slept with men before, men who were good at it, too, after all. Although they didn’t have that laughing passion, the playful intensity that Charles had, that distinctive taste equal parts seduction and cordiality. Was that all he’d been waiting for?

His mind shied away from the temptation of that answer as he dressed himself in his usual suit and tie, snatching a shirt and hoodie for Charles. Instead, he found himself thinking of his mother.

He remembered the weight of her embrace, the soothing warmth of it from his childhood. He remembered the scrape of her nails on his scalp, her fingers combing his hair. Then the soft sibilant whisper of _his_ words soothing him.

Her jerked up suddenly, listening to the man downstairs on the phone—his soft, exact accent, his low, vibrating tone that shivered over Erik’s skin even at this distance.

Was that what it was? No one had taken care of him since his mother’s death, not even his father—nothing beyond a roof over his head and food on the table. Was this what he’d been waiting for without even knowing it? Someone to put their hands in his hair and whisper soothingly to him in the night, someone to hold him tightly and warm him…

The thought galled, and Erik found himself flushing hotly with the embarrassment of it as he buttoned his shirt. He was a grown man. He’d been taking care of himself since he was fifteen. He didn’t need someone to hide himself in or cast responsibility onto.

…But he had needed it last night. And Charles, through whatever miracle of serendipity, had been both close at hand and intensely capable of taking it on. The smaller man, with his flirtatious flippancy, his wild breathless ease, had revealed something of himself last night even as Erik had been revealed. There was something inside Charles Erik had hardly suspected at first: something hard and steady on which to build a foundation, should Erik choose to build it, should Charles allow him to.

“Who are you talking to?” he questioned, pulling on his jacket and tromping downstairs where Charles was exiting the hallway.

Charles was already hanging up, shaking his head and splattering cold water from his hair as he did so.

“It was Miss Frost actually,” he said with a dazed look as if he didn’t realize the woman had his number. “She was having a hard time getting a hold of you and decided to call me. She sounded very smug to find we were together—I don’t know why. It was a given we were going to be sleeping together—staying together! In the house! I mean...” he gave up all at once, blushing all the way down his chest and snatching the clothes out of Erik’s hand. “Are you ready yet?”

“I didn’t hear my phone go off.” Had it died again?

“I don’t see how you would have, it being at the house and all. Speaking of which...” Charles dug in his jeans pocket and handed Erik his mini notebook and pen.

“Where’d you get these from?”

“From your trousers before I put them to wash with mine last night. I was just starting them in the dryer. Really, you didn’t notice they weren’t still on the floor where you left them? Or do clothes magically wash themselves at your pad, in which case I’ll have to investigate further.”

Erik rolled his eyes and held his hand out for the rest of his loot. Charles just blinked at him owlishly and then reached out as well to hold his hand. Shaking him loose, he growled, “No, my necklace.”

“I haven’t got your necklace.

“It was in my pants pocket.”

“It wasn’t.”

“I put it right in the side pocket.”

“I checked all the pockets, I assure you. It must have fallen out in our… _tussle_. I’ll bring it back for you, along with your satchel,” Charles assured, yanking the old V-neck over his head. The dark gray-purple brought out the bruises on his throat marvelously, just as Erik had anticipated, but he put that to the side in order to be completely confused by what Charles had said.

“What are you talking about? I’ll just grab it when I interview the team.”

Charles stopped with one arm in his hoodie, staring abjectly.

“Wha?”

“I said—“

“No, I know what you said but…you don’t mean at the house, surely. Not when you can just interview them afterwards at the motel.”

“Well I could have interviewed you _all_ at the motel afterwards. Anyone can do that. That’s not really what Emma had in mind. I'm sure she said as much when she called, making sure we were still on schedule. ”

“Well maybe so, but things change. She wouldn’t ask you to go back there if she knew what had happened to you yesterday.”

 _Yes, she absolutely would,_ Erik thought but still blushed deeply, face burning with it.

He’d let things get out of hand yesterday, and now Charles thought he couldn’t do his job. Just when he was thinking the highest of Charles the man was apparently thinking the worst of him: weak, hysterical, babyish. And all over something so very stupid. Today the exact memory was hazy, was wrapped in thick black gauze that made it hard to discern exactly what had to leave him with such a reckoning. All that remained was the muscle memory—the pounding of his heart against his ribs, the rush of adrenaline through his veins. It was if there were a well inside him into which he’d shoved last night’s terrors, making them dark and murky. Every now and then those gimlet eyes flashed to the surface, a chalky charcoal arm, a gasping smoky breath—but then they slipped back below the water and Erik wasn’t forced to see them, acknowledge them any longer.

He knew memories like that, indistinct, obscure thoughts, turgid and tasteless. He’d have to throw that pot out. It was obviously no good—worse than no good, was downright harmful. He’d had no idea that ancient hash could be so destructive, so terrifyingly harmful, or he’d have never done it. Sure it had given him new insight into Charles, but it had also given Charles false insight into him, turning him into someone that had to be coddled and worked around—someone unprofessional and weak-minded.

“Who are you, my babysitter? Don’t worry about me.”

“Don’t worry about you?” Charles repeated, flushing brightly, and when he came to he was passionate with wrath. “Fine! Excuse me for thinking that your emotional breakdown last night was something to worry about. Obviously we’re ignoring you screaming hysterically in a bathroo—“

Erik sidled forward and wrapped his hand over Charles’ mouth, pressing him into the wall gently with the length of his body, grinning when Charles groaned softly into his palm.

“Hush, now, professor, before you break something.”

Charles glared at him, but it seemed as much amorous as it was acrimonious. He slowly peeled Erik’s hand off his face, arching slightly into his weight, as if he couldn’t help it.

 “Erik, think about this,” the man demanded, getting enough space to plant his feet firmly, scruffy jean cuffs flopping halfway over his soles. “I’m sure you’ve got a great job, but is it really worth putting yourself through that again?”

Erik paused and made a show of really considering it even though he’d already decided. Emma wouldn’t fire him for quitting this thing, though she would think less of him as a man. He could get away with throwing this job to the wolves, or at least to Janos. What he couldn’t get away with, he’d decided, was to throw Charles aside likewise. He wasn’t sure where this was going, but he knew it was promising, knew he wanted to stay on this ride as long as long as Charles let him. He knew that, if he explained it all, Charles wouldn’t be so against the idea of him going back to the house—if he understood it was all just a drugged out fluke it would save him anxiety. But it would lose Erik something more than that. He was too old for this to be cute. A man his age hiding behind his car to toke up at work was only precocious in a Judd Apatow movie. No one in real life looked at that (and that hysteria that it accidentally resulted in) and thought “Oh yeah, that’s totally worth coming back to this shit town for”.

So Erik kept his mouth shut.

“You’ve exhausted your limit on worrying about me. Now get in the car before I leave you behind.”


	22. Chapter 22

Erik dropped into the driver’s seat and was immediately hugging the steering wheel. He flailed at the chair control before he could shove it backwards and breathe fully, rubbing his bruised sternum.

“What the hell!” he gasped, coughing. “…Did you…did you drive last night?”

Charles rolled his eyes at him from the passenger’s seat, phone to his ear.

“Darwin!” the man exclaimed eagerly. “Yes, we’re just leaving now. Did someone already bring Raven to the high school?” Erik had nothing better to do, so when he got them onto the main road, he reached over and started running his palm over Charles’ thigh. The man pushed him away, glaring slightly, and went back to his phone conversation. Rude. Surely he could get molested and talk at the same time. If anyone were capable of it it would surely be Charles. _“Az_ took her? What’s Az doing here? Darwin, _what the hell_ , why did you let him come?! She’s not going to get any work done! Is he with her right now?”

The man dropped his face into one palm and then pulled his still-wet hair.

“I _know_ he’s a grown man, but…No, not _stop_ him but talk him out of it, yes! … _No_! Darwin you know I adore Azazel, that’s not what I’m saying—I’d rather _neither_ of them come along! But if she _is_ going to come _to do work_ then I’d prefer she come _alone_ so she can actually get the work done! Now you’ve left them alone at the school together, unsupervised, when you know we’ve got so much to catch up on and can’t afford any more delays.”

The man’s face lit up bright red at something said on the other end and Erik glanced nervously as he took a right towards the strip mall.

“ _That is different and you know it, Armando!”_ the man hissed, glancing back at Erik. “Listen, I did not call you to discuss this! Now tell me what the house is doing. Did you get my data from last yesterday? What’s happened so far?”

Erik tuned out then, trying once more to reach Charles’ inseam, but he was rebuffed with a _painful_ squeeze to his hand so he let it drop. He’d get some sugar into the man, he decided as he struggled to ignore Charles’ hissings of “That can’t be right. No, Darwin, that cannot be right”. That should do the trick. If anyone was likely to freak out on low blood sugar, surely it would be Charles. That had to be what this was—no breakfast, a breakneck pace, and Darwin apparently giving him a hard time for dropping the ball. Erik refused to let himself think it could be anything else.

They’d had a nice time together. Charles wasn’t holding last night against him, apparently, or why would he sleep with him that morning? Twice. And both times had been phenomenal, if exhausting. Charles had enjoyed himself; he couldn’t deny that.

Playing back all the little details that _proved_ Charles had enjoyed himself, Erik grinned and relaxed in his seat, peaceful enough to accidentally overhear what he was trying to ignore.

“Darwin, there must be! A man like him doesn’t break down into hysterical sobbing over _nothing_!”

“Hey!” Erik yelped angrily, car swerving as he nearly missed the turn off to the parking lot.

Charles looked up, and the giant inflatable donut outside the door seemed to reflect in his eyes.

“Darwin—I’ll have to call you back,” he whispered, and hung up immediately, hand reaching out and grabbing Erik’s where it was putting them into park.

“Don’t tell people about that!” Erik growled. Charles didn’t seem to hear him.

“Have I died and gone to heaven?”

It was impossible not to find Charles' awestruck demeanor endearing, and Erik found himself forgiving the man in spite of himself. 

“Better than that,” he sighed. “Fred’s Freedom Donuts.”

“I love you,” Charles gasped, squeezing his hand, ignorant of Erik’s sudden burning blush. “I love Fred. I love freedom.”

And then the man was scrabbling out of the car like a five year old at Disney World, and Erik, the inexperienced parent, was left racing to keep up, snatching his wallet out of the glove compartment, legs tingling slightly.

_He was just joking!_

Charles stood in the tiled entryway, sweeping air towards himself and breathing as deeply as possible. The place was mostly empty luckily: just a mom and her unisex toddler, covered in chocolate, at a table in the corner, and the girl behind the counter. Erik recognized her from as a teen who’d job shadowed with Emma for a couple days last summer, Gwen Somethingorother. She stared at Charles with wide blue eyes, chewing on the end of her white-blonde pony-tail.

“Can I live here, please?” Charles requested, eyes closed rapturously. He opened them quickly though to drop on his knees in front of the luminous donut-window, threatening to drool all over the glass.

“I can put my bed right here.”

“We won’t have room to replay this morning,” Erik sniggered at him and Charles looked up at him from the display case with huge, almost shining eyes. But there was something in them, something sunk deep in their waters that made Erik’s spine shiver.

Luckily they looked away as Charles’ phone went off in his pocket.

” _Nevermore! Nevermore!_ ” it croaked loudly, making them both jump.

Charles fumbled with his oversized pockets as he stood.

“Fuck! And here’s me reeking of a fucking pastry shop! She’ll flay me!” Shoving his wallet at Erik, he sprinted from the building. “Get one of everything!” But he ran back, pointing at the Danish Donuts. “Get two of those. Three. Get three of those.”

And he was gone, nearly knocking into the inflatable donut, distracted by his phone.

“Ain’t that the…?” Gwen questioned, pointing at Charles as he left.

“Yes.”

“Dijou do that ter his neck?”

Erik turned and glared at her.

“One of everything. Three of those. And a Venti drip coffee.”

Erik had didn't even entertain the thought of of using Charles’ money, but he flipped through the man’s wallet anyway.

There was a hundred dollar bill and some ill-used twenties, a receipt for Starbucks with something scribbled on the back that Erik couldn’t make out. There were various credit cards and no less than _three_ library cards: Westchester, New York and _London._ In another pocket was a school ID for Oxford University in which Erik almost didn’t recognize the other man.

 Charles looked very young, with short, tidy hair, which wasn’t so unrecognizable, but his expression certainly was. There was something inexpressibly sad that cast a pall over the photo, that made Charles’ bright vibrant eyes look clouded and doleful, his full red mouth thin and down-turned, his cheeks sallow and sunken, everything about it closed off, distrustful, awaiting a fresh blow.

He realized Gwen was staring at him.

“I said: leave room fer cream?” she repeated, chewing on her hair.

“What? No…no that’s fine.”

Outside, Charles was huddled up against the wall between Fred’s and the Subway, hissing something into his phone about how it wasn’t the same thing at all and _why_ couldn’t _anyone_ understand that? Turning to knock his head back against the concrete, Charles caught him laden with donuts and went weak at the knees. “Erik just got back with…with breakfast. I’m on my way now. Please have something worthwhile for me to bring to Darwin.”

He hung up and immediately grabbed for the bag of donuts, struggling to drag them to the car against Erik’s grip.

“Hey, some of those are for me, too, _Francis._ ”

Stopping dead in his tracks, Charles glared at him and yanked his wallet out of Erik’s pocket.

“You nosy cad; why don’t Jews have embarrassing middle names?”

“Because God _likes_ us.”

* * *

 

Charles didn’t so much as eat his donut as inhale it, as if eating it as quickly as possible would get them there any faster.

“What was Raven complaining about?” he questioned.

“Hmm?” Charles grunted around glazed sugar. “Oh…nothing. She finds it amusing to accuse me of being hypocritical, just because I’d like her to get _some_ work done on her work holiday.”

“Why don’t you just threaten to fire her? Isn’t that how one normally gets underlings to work?”

“ _Ha_! Underlings, overlings; you’re an absolute riot. The Discovery Channel recompenses us for the filming, but these preliminary missions are pure volunteerism. Raven takes that very much to heart.”

“Why does she even come then if not to help with the ghost hunting?”

“ _Paranormal investigation._ And I gather she sees it more as an excuse for a vacation than anything scientifically relevant. I’m surprised she bothers helping with the research at all, other than that she doesn’t much like to feel left out of things—even if they are things she has no interest in.”

Erik was about to ask why Charles should care if this grabby woman felt left out or not, but before he could, Charles was already interrupting him.

“Don’t you have cologne or something?” the man mumbled, digging through the glove compartment with one hand and licking his sticky fingers clean on the other.

“It's in there,” said Erik, but Charles growled, apparently not finding it in his blinding rush. Erik he coasted into the visitor parking at the high school, tossing back enough caffeine to get him through the next couple hours. He still felt noticeably exhausted beyond all reasoning. 

Charles snatched the cup out of his hand, gulping a few mouthfuls before breaking off with a grimace.

“God that’s awful. Is there no sugar in it at all? Ugh. Wait here. I’ll be right back.”

“Yeah right,” Erik muttered, and got out of the car as well. His H2 was still at the house but he did have his notes—it was old school but enough to interview Raven. He didn’t know who Azazel was, other than an unfortunately named boyfriend, but if he had a role in the show then he’d interview him as well. 

“Do I smell like a bakery?” Charles worried on the sidewalk, straightening his T-shirt and hoodie as if it were an expensive suit that should hang a certain impeccable way.

Erik wrapped a swift arm around his waist and dragged him close, nearly off his feet, burying his face in the man’s throat and inhaling deeply.

Charles groaned deep in his chest, a noise that went straight to Erik’s exhausted cock and when he smiled he made sure his teeth caught on the soft mottled skin of Charles’ neck.

“ _Yes_.”

Charles pushed him away but the move was halfhearted, undermined by the way Charles’ body swayed back against him like a stuttering pendulum. The man tried again, more successfully.

“We should—” he struggled to say but couldn’t finish the thought, simply turning and wavering on weak legs into the school. Erik smiled hugely and followed.

By time they checked in at the front desk, Charles was more capable of speech.

“I won’t pretend I know what I’m doing here. I don’t. I never expected you to want to…for you…for us to…work together, after…after—What I mean is, I _do_ know we have to keep this professional.”

“This from the guy who propositioned me on his motel doorstep!”

Charles stopped in the empty hallway to argue, and Erik saw he was in earnest—his mouth serious and drawn, his eyes intent.

“That was different, Erik. We were _alone_. We’re not alone now and we have to act accordingly.”

Erik checked the hallway to make sure and then slipped closer, possessive hand on Charles’ waist.

“We’re alone right now.”

Charles seemed at a loss for words again, watching Erik’s mouth carefully, as if he’d very much like to kiss him, and Erik very much wished he would—but in the next moment the man had turned away again, shaking his head as they walked to the photography building.

“Was this your school?” Charles asked when he could manage speech again.

“Yes. They even have a picture of me still up here. In the trophy case.”

“Let me guess,” Charles teased, eyes light and playful again. “Chess club?”

Erik blushed because Charles was wrong without being completely wrong. Erik _had_ been in the chess club when he was in high school—had actually _founded_ the chess club to be more honest, but he’d never won any awards for it since they never had enough kids to form a local league.

“Soccer, actually,” he growled back, not mentioning the chess thing, not right then at least.

Charles stared at him abjectly, nearly tripping on his oversized Keds.

“You played football?”

“Since I was eleven,” Erik grinned back. “I gave it up when some overeager Sweeper slidetackled my tibia in half.”

“Graphic, darling,” Charles winced. “A tad graphic.”


	23. Chapter 23

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this took so long to upload guys! We're getting to the heavily edited portions of the original text, and so I've basically rewritten the next ten chapters or so and rewriting is taking FOREVERRRR. It doesn't help that I'm writing Asleep right now as well, so the two are competing for my time. But Asleep only has one chapter left, so hopefully I'll have more time then! For now, keep in mind that this was quickly written, barely edited, and therefore I'm positive there must be more than one mistake in here--hopefully it's not too huge!! Enjoy, bear with me, and remember that I love each and every one of you for reading my stories at all despite my awfulness!

Charles had one hand on the door handle but didn’t turn it, just stood there and took deep breaths.

“This is the blonde in the show, right? Not some demon under the floorboards?”

Charles just gave him a petulant glare and jerked the door open.

“The prodigal son returns!” a woman's voice called out immediately and Erik followed it in, already damning himself for teasing Charles into opening the door. Until then it had just been the two of them, in a perfect bubble where they could flirt and joke and fuck. Already that morning the outside world had been encroaching close, sidling up to their borders. Why had he encouraged the man to throw open their doors and invite in their invaders?

“Hello, darling,” Charles drawled back. “I see you remain hard at work.”

The room was free of students, with their empty and austere rows of desks in perfect ninety-degree order, so that Erik knew Aben-Arens was still the photography professor. She wasn’t around though. Instead, at her immaculate and Spartan desk, a blond woman was sitting with her feet propped up on the knees of the man sitting in the wooden rolling chair. Erik recognized her automatically, her pale blue eyes and her wavy blonde hair, her full rosy face and quirking smirk. He _didn’t_ recognize the man with her, sitting there with ice-chip eyes and long straight black hair pulled back into ponytail, facial hair that Erik immediately disliked. Must be the boyfriend. Erik felt the immediate urge to dislike him—because of his dumb goatee and because Charles hadn’t wanted him there and because he had no use for him—but those eyes seemed to bore straight into him and stop some mechanism necessary to make any determination, one way or the other, about him. He kept to looking at Charles instead, trying to bite down on his shiver.

 “Hey,” the woman (Raven, Erik recalled from the show) huffed, pointing at Charles menacingly with a serious finger. “You’re my brother, not my boss.”

Charles’ face flushed immediately and Erik couldn’t tell if she was serious or if her joking was what was making his face darken up.

“I’m not bossing—” he spluttered but she cut him off, jumping down from the desk and stalking closer, squinting at him curiously. The eerie man followed close behind.

“What the hell happened to your neck? It looks like you were mauled by a sucker fish.”

Charles’ jaw tightened but he neither flinched nor glanced at Erik, making Erik feel bad for doing both. Hopefully Raven wasn’t looking at him.

“That’s exactly what happened, I’m sure,” Charles drawled. “Now do you have my photos or not? I’m in a rush.”

“Too rushed for introductions? How rude of you,” she teased, eyes glinting just like how Charles’ did. There was something about the color of blue, though, that made it feel icier, not as warm as Charles’. Charles’ glint seemed mysterious, mischievous—Raven’s seemed cunning, sinister. He liked her immediately for it, but coveted her less. The way people felt more respect for tigers but when picking a pet seemed to see the merits more of cats.

“Erik, this is my sister, Raven, and her boyfriend, Azazel,” Charles sighed quickly. “Raven, Azazel, this is Erik Lensherr. He’s the reporter from the ADN that’s shadowing our investigation.”

“If reporters like you got assigned to us in every city I’d almost see the point of this ghost-hunting business,” Raven grinned, raking her eyes over his frame.

“Paranormal research,” he muttered in correction, and moved, imperceptibly, a little behind Charles. Yet he got the feeling that Azazel, with his glass-blue eyes, perceived it.

Charles couldn’t help but throw him some alms, even in front of his sister, and he was rewarded for his loyalty with a quick smile. Azazel caught that as well.

“If you’re quite finished,” Charles suggested, returning back to his sparring match. “I need those photos.”

“You take this stuff too seriously,” Raven yawned, and dragged her feet back to the desk, sweeping up a thin folder. Charles started forward joyfully, leaving Erik to stay or follow as he would. He followed, even though it meant passing Azazel’s deep-seeing eyes.

Before Charles could get his hands on the folder, Raven yanked it away again, staring at him.

“Why are you limping?”

Charles refused to react, but she caught Erik off guard so he couldn’t help _his_ accidental flinch— _Was Charles limping? Had he hurt Charles? He hadn’t noticed. He never should have let the man seduce him into doing it twice in a row._

“Oh my god,” Raven hissed, staring at Erik anew. “What in the depths of hell are you packing down there?”

In the time it took his face to light up red, Charles was already coming to his rescue, throwing an arm before his hips to stave off Raven’s lascivious gaze.

“Leave Magnus alone!” he growled, raising his voice for the first time with her. Raven was shocked, and so was Erik, but not because of any snarling. He was horrified that Charles had somehow forgotten his name. But before the fear could take hold all the way in his bones Charles was already turning to him, eyes shining, smile sheepishly endearing and any nervousness was struck from his mind.

“I named it Magnus,” Charles murmured to him as privately as he could. “I hope that’s all right. Then, if we were feeling familiar, I could call it Mags.”

He tried his hardest, but he just couldn’t keep himself from beaming back at the other man—it was everything he could do to not reach out and put his arm around his waist, pull him closer, smell _his_ soap and shampoo on Charles and whisper right into his ear that he could call it whatever the fuck he wanted to so long as he stuck around to call it _something_.

Raven watched them, watched him, and seemed to make a decision. She handed Charles the envelope and then sat back and waited.

It didn’t take long, as Charles ripped open the photos eagerly, and immediately whined.

“Raven! Where are the rest? This is barely a full roll!”

“I’ve got more finishing up in the photo lab,” she admitted, jerking her head to a black metal door in the back wall. “Did you want them?”

“Sister dear,” Charles growled sweetly, knuckles white on the meager stack of papers. “You know that I do!”

“Okay,” the woman nodded. Then smiled at Erik. “You can help me.”

Stiffening beside him, Charles quickly forbade it: “No.”

“He’s a reporter, isn’t he?” Raven questioned. “He’s supposed to get an idea for what we do here. This is what I do here. Why shouldn’t he get a glimpse behind the scenes?”

“She’s right,” said Erik, grinning.

“Erik!”

“What? Why shouldn’t I?”

Charles obviously had some reason why he shouldn’t, but if his anxious glancing at his sister were any indication, it wasn’t one he could admit to in front of her. Seething with frustration, he turned to Raven.

“Would you stop it? I haven’t time for this.”

“Why?” she demanded. “I’m your sister aren’t I? I’ve got a perfect right to.”

Turning away, Charles took out his cell-phone, immediately losing all interest.

“Fine. Whatever. You'll do what you want,” he intoned, and didn’t give her another glance, didn’t recognize or respond to the venomous glare she was shooting him.

“Come along, Erik dear,” she growled, yanking him towards the dark room. “You’re all mine.”

Charles didn’t contradict her, and he found himself wishing he hadn’t thwarted the man either if this was what it got him, Charles didn’t look up from his phone as he was dragged away by Raven, stronger than she looked. Azazel smiled at him as he left.

 

* * *

The dark room was, well, _dark,_ which Erik had of course been expecting. But he hadn’t expected his own reaction to it. As soon has he was through the door his breath seemed to seize in his chest and he stumbled, falling behind Raven as she stalked quickly inside. Erik had never taken photography, but he had worked for the student paper which was managed by Aben-Arens, and he had once gone down on a bi-curious aspiring photo-journalist back here. It hadn’t seemed so eerie then, the red overhead lighting bathing everything in blood.

There were the cutting tables on the left, built into the wall, and the metal chemical table jutting into the middle of the room that could be worked on either side, photos hanging above it to dry. Raven went there now, tapping the dangling pages to check their dampness, maybe. Erik pressed his back against the wall so he could stop feeling as if someone were standing just behind him, and took his notebook out of his pocket. His palms were sweating and he wiped them on his slacks.

“So Charles is your brother,” he murmured, pulling at his stifling collar. “Is he the reason you got into this ghost-hunting? You don’t seem to give it much stock on its own account.”

“ ‘Ghost-hunting’ it is now, hm?” she sniggered back at him. “You weren’t calling it that in front of my brother.”

Erik was happy that it was too dark in here to show his blush.

“How long have you been tagging along after Charles?” he barbed.

“How long have _you_?”

“The show’s done two full seasons and you’ve been there from episode one—that seems a bit odd if you’ve no interest in this stuff. Everyone else on the show’s believer enough.”

“Oh jeeze,” Raven sighed finally. “We’re not getting far, are we? Okay, I’ll bend first, since you’ve already shown me you’re a stubborn prick and Character Study was on my checklist.”

She turned to him, leaning with her hip against the table. The light lit her up from behind, giving her a bright red halo.

“I’ve never believed in this ghost shit, although it’s all my fault Charles got into it as a kid. Too many ghost stories trying to scare each other, you know? It’s a case of over-active imagination turning into life-long delusion. If only I had a time machine. There’s no stopping it now, though, god knows. And anyway, at least it gets him out of the house and socializing, meeting exciting people like you, so I let him have his fun.”

Erik bristled at the intimation that Raven _let_ Charles do anything. He was a grown man, capable of eating pizza and fucking journalists and wasting his life as he saw fit. Raven continued before he could snarl as much.

“Now that I’ve answered your question, I’ve got one myself,” she said, eyes glinting even in the dark. “You’ve got your taste of him. What now?”

Shifting uncomfortably, Erik feigned ignorance. “What do you mean?”

“Come on,” Raven wheedled. “I gave you much better than that. You _know_ what I mean. You don’t have to worry. I don’t care either way—it would actually be a hellova lot easier if you were the hit-em and quit-em type, so don’t feel embarrassed. I just need to know: are you content with screwing him or are you attempting to date him?”

_Date him._

Of course.

Erik didn’t smile, refused to, but he felt as if his _urge_ to smile filled him so completely that it was just as obvious. _Date him._ That was surely the answer he’d been scrounging for all morning, only it was so foreign to him that he hadn’t been able to hit on it right away. It made perfect sense. He wanted Charles, wanted his body, yes, that was the most obvious, the one he had the most experience with—but more than that, he wanted his quick retorts, his mischievous glances, his playful smiles and his company. He wanted these things so much that a day, a week, wasn’t enough to sate him, and to get his fill he’d need months, years even, and when you wanted someone around in that way and for that amount of time you were supposed to date them to get it. It was a social contract, a mutual understanding that gave two people a right to each other, a right to not just sex but _more_ than sex.

It was understandable that Erik hadn’t thought of it earlier. It wasn’t a problem he was used to getting himself into. Usually he met a guy, he thought it’d be fun to sleep together, they slept together, and then Erik drove back home. Every now and then he’d find someone good enough or intriguing enough in bed to think “We should do that again” in which case he’d get their number and they’d do it again, maybe even a few times. But not one of those times had he suddenly thought, “I wonder what this guy thinks about horror movies. I wonder what he looks like reading _Jane Eyre_ in the morning before he’s ready to get out of bed. I wonder what his favorite dessert is and what his reaction would be if I were to get it for him right this very second.” He should have known, he probably should have at least _surmised_ that when you started to wonder those things about someone you turned away from hitting him up on a random drunken Friday night and thought seriously about calling this guy after work, driving up to his place for the weekend, planning their holidays around each other.

He realized Raven was still waiting for a response, and then realized that he’d forgotten what, exactly, she had asked him.

“What?” he asked, wishing his voice hadn’t come out half so dreamy.

“Oh, I know,” she laughed, conspiratorially, misunderstanding his long silence. “It’s a tough one. I mean, on the one hand he’s such a _flirt_ and god do guys dig that. You’re not the first to be taken in by it. But the morning after guys tend to remember that ‘good in bed’ is not the sole requirement for a boyfriend. With the ghost shit, and that’s only the biggest, and then the cardigans and the book clubs and the _chess_! _Dear god_ , the chess! How many times have I tried to explain to him that men do not date men who literally, seriously and _for fun_ play chess!! He’s almost certifiably dorky. I understand if you’re looking for a way to throw in the towel without getting into a professional snafu. Trust me, we’re not going to turn this into a bigger deal that it actually is. I just need to know.”

Erik just stared at her for a second in the dark, wondering seriously if she might be brain damaged, or at least very severely psychotic.

Charles? Certifiably _dorky?_ All the adjectives in the world to describe him and she picked _dorky?_ While clever, irreverent, charming, beautiful, witty and sexy as all hell were still in existence? In his mind’s eye he saw Charles, smile flashing, eyes glinting, the way his hips swayed when he walked, the way his mouth wrapped lovingly around every vowel, the way his mouth wrapped around something else…

No, dorky was not the right word for him. But Raven was obviously not worth arguing this with if she couldn’t see it already after knowing him so many years.

“Why the hell do you care?” he growled. “Why are you even asking me this?”

Sighing, Raven turned and looked over her photos again, and then went to the cutting table and took up a single sheaf.

“Charles…he isn’t the best at these things. I’ll blame it on his complete lack of understanding of real human beings. And what he doesn’t know often gets him into trouble. He’s just too easy to dupe, you know? And life seems keen on teaching him harsh lessons about misplaced trust.” With this she tossed the paper on the table towards him. He stopped it from sliding off with one finger, stepping from the wall and immediately shivering at the cold air on his back.

The photo was black and white, and Erik realized from the angle it was taken from one of the upstairs windows at the Gone-Away House, as a view of the drive way. The porch overhang took up a sliver of the bottom of the picture, and the start of the forest took up a sliver of the top, and in the center was him, Erik, by his car on his phone.

“For whatever reason he likes you. And I need to judge if that’s wise of him, because he’s such a shit judge on his own. It’s not a big deal. No one’s going to go get their pitchforks and torches if you’re not into him. We’re extremely used to it. Just let me know so I can start to let him down easy.”

Erik kept his eyes on the photo, even though he had a big urge to glare at Raven. Where the hell did she get off? For all her discussion of how she didn’t care either way, he noticed she had a lot more to say on the subject of him dismissing Charles than of him dating him.

He passed the photo back to her.

“You should get the rest of these down. Charles and I are in a hurry.”

He left Raven behind, passing through the shadowy hall between the dark room and the class room. The door was ajar, allowing a little light and plenty of sound to reach him. He stopped on the threshold, taking advantage of both and trying not to think about how absolutely embarrassingly juvenile it was as he stood there and abjectly eavesdropped.

“—an idiot?” Charles was asking nervously, or maybe sadly. He could only see a strip of desks and the front door from his thin vantage point, but he could hear very well, so he focused on that.

“No,” a low, gruff voice growled. “I don’t. What’s so idiotic about having a good time? And you did have a good time, didn’t you?”

“ _Yes_ ,” Charles laughed. Erik smiled widely.

“Well then, what’s to stop you from continuing to have a good time? You’re not marrying him after all; you might never even see him again. But why stop before you have to?”

“I don’t know…”

“Think about it like this,” Azazel suggested, voice slow and methodical. “If someone told you you’d have to give up ice cream tomorrow, what would you do today? Give it up early or enjoy it while you can?”

Erik held his breath to hear the answer, but missed it as he was slammed into the metal door and through it, stumbling out bruised and blinded to see Raven sauntering out behind him, pictures in hand.

“Raven!” Charles balked, jumping up from his seat beside Azazel on the teacher’s desk to catch Erik and help him upright again. “What is the matter with you?”

“Sorry,” she laughed, patting him apologetically on the ass. “Didn’t see you there. Guess that’s why they call it a dark room!”

“Did you get the rest of the pictures?” Charles demanded, brushing Erik off, and Erik didn’t know what to make of the fact that his hands didn’t linger anywhere in particular.

“Fine, fine,” she sighed, handing them over. “Here you go.”

“Thank you,” Charles groaned, adding them to his stack in the folder. “We’ve got to get going now. Are you two coming up to the house with us?”

“Nah,” Raven waved. “My work here is done. Think we’ll go watch Court TV in the hotel room and…see what comes up?”

Azazel smiled at his girlfriend and she bit her lip provocatively back at him. Erik wasn’t sure if he felt more disgusted or jealous, but finally decided on jealous.

How come he couldn’t drag Charles back to his hotel to have random middle of the day sex? Didn’t he deserve after all he’d been through?

“I assume you’ll still show up just in time for the photographer. She arrives at three. Please be presentable.”

“So, no hickeys?” Raven teased, looking at Charles’ throat meaningfully. He refused to blush, simply grabbing Erik’s arm and leading him stiffly to the door, calling back over his shoulder, “Three o’clock. Don’t be late.”


	24. Chapter 24

There was a big white van parked in the gravel driveway, but other than that the Gone Away House looked just the same as yesterday: quaint, too slender, and rather innocuous. Erik clamped down on a shiver, and tried to unclutch the steering wheel where he was white-knuckling it.

The dying of the engine left only an overwhelming silence, and Erik immediately wished he’d left it running, left the radio on, something, anything.

Charles came to his rescue, filling the silence with his own caressing voice, soft and careful, not rushed now, not growling.

“It’s not too late,” he said. “You can still back out of this.”

Huffing angrily, Erik forced himself out of the car, slamming the door behind him, but only made it to the edge of the gravel before his ire ran out and his indecision took hold again.

 _What the fuck are you doing?_ he wondered, staring up at the face of the house, the sun well risen behind it, casting him in the building’s cold shadow.

He bit down on that cowardly voice, clenching his fists.

_It was pot. Fucking hallucinations. It was not real. It has not beaten me._

He was shocked out of his determination when Charles came up behind him and put his arms around his waist, warming his spine, resting his chin on his shoulder and smiling into his face when Erik stared dumbly at him.

“Okay, my stubborn one,” the man murmured, voice vibrating into Erik’s back until he wanted to arch into it like a cat. “I get it. You’re one of these American cowboy types, never backing down from a challenge. I’ll stop wounding your pilgrim pride. But know…I’ll be right by your side, Erik. I won’t let anything happen to you.”

 _I don’t need you babysitting me,_ he wanted to growl, throwing Charles’ hands off him in a tiff. Or else reach behind him, cup Charles possessively in his hand, smirk at him, show him exactly how fine he was. But he did neither.

Instead, he put his hands over Charles’ on his waist and rested his head a moment against Charles’, breathing in the scent of his own shampoo on the man, his own detergent and his own soap, until Charles was just another of his things, belonging solely to him, and asked, “What did Azazel say to you?”

Charles stilled behind him, shifting on his feet.

“What are you talking about?” he asked with no little strain and Erik shook his head with a forfeiting smile.

Oh well. What the hell did it matter _what_ Azazel had said to him, exactly, so long as it got Charles back to normal, back to his own fun, flirtatious, _hands-on_ self.

“Oh, forget it,” he sighed.

“And besides,” Charles moved on cheerfully, squeezing him. Erik wondered if it was some kind of reward for not pressing the issue, not forcing him to answer. “Darwin says the place hasn’t made a peep all morning. Perhaps whatever happened yesterday was just a one-off!”

So it was of course at that moment that the front door exploded open and the redheaded boy Erik recognized from the show slammed onto the patio, shrieking, “Mr. Charles! Mr. Charles! Quick!” and then disappeared just as suddenly, tripping over the door jamb and lunging back into the house on all fours.

Charles spent one moment staring at him in surprise and the very next millisecond he was sprinting away, and Erik could swear he heard an audible bang as air rushed to inhabit his vacated space, that was how quickly he went from at Erik’s side to bounding up the front steps.

“Fucking hell,” he snarled and sprinted to follow, skidding on the vestigial sheen of grass slime still left over from yesterday’s flood.

Erik would have been anxious about his return to the house but frankly the moment was too hectic for nerves. He banged through the front door, barely stopping to scrape his shoes off on the mat, immediately met with a barrage of sound and motion.

“Sean--check the stairwell readings! Hank, are you getting this!” the black man from the show was shouting, pointing randomly about the house, staring at a laptop he had set up on the kitchen counter.  Charles was slathered right up on him, like jam on toast. Sean was sprinting between every wall box in the house. Someone upstairs was shouting downstairs: “I’m getting it! I’m getting it all!”

“Is this authentic? When did this start happening?” Charles demanded, shaking Darwin’s shoulder excitedly.

“Just a minute ago! Hey—what happened to your neck?”

“What? Oh!” With a jolt Charles peeled himself off the other man and leapt like a scared cat before spotting Erik. He relaxed with a sheepish blush, rushing over and drawing him in by the arm. “Erik! Sorry, Darwin this is Erik. I mean Mr. Lensherr! From..from the ADN. He’s the journalist.”

Darwin had seemed pleasantly curious at first, looking him up and down, smiling a little bit—but as soon as Charles introduced him his grin collapsed. Erik wondered what that was about, but the man’s face, dark and modelesque, turned impassive and he knew he wasn’t going to find anything out just by staring.

“Darwin, right? Nice to meet you,” he tried.

“Armando,” the man corrected, still staring him down. “You as well. I guess you’re the one that’s been keeping Charles so busy?”

The man’s eyes tightened on Charles’ throat and returned to him in a glare. Was that it? He didn’t like him spending time with Charles? What the hell was it to him…?

“I think the numbers are right!” Sean shouted from the landing on the second staircase. “I mean…what were the numbers again?”

“What’s happening?” Erik questioned, looking around.

“Electromagnetic fluctuations, temperature—everything,” Darwin explained, happiness returned despite himself as he turned back to the computers. Like Charles, he was apparently incapable of remaining unmoved in the face of work. Erik approached alongside him, taking his notebook out and jotting things down. He realized it was that same AC/DC machine they’d finagled with yesterday.

“This is the electromagnetic sensor. We’re trying to map if these fluctuations are coinciding with the temperature fluctuations we’re getting.”

“Cold spots?” Charles questioned.

“No—hot spots!” Darwin corrected, looking excited.

Charles seemed surprised.

“Really?”

“Well that’s what we’re seeing so far.”

“I told you so,” Charles grinned happily and Darwin rolled his eyes, pushing him by the shoulder.

“Hey, I had every reason to be a little leery,” the man growled, and when he said it he looked at Erik.

“Is Hank looking at the data from last night?”

“He’s graphing it out now, and recording the current data. Do you think you got the same last night?”

“I thought I was getting cold spots, but I'll have to double check my readings…”

“What’s the difference—cold spots, hot spots?” Erik questioned.

Darwin didn’t bother to answer, leaving it to Charles.

“Basically, the running theory at least, is that a cold spot represents a spirit drawing out energy and a hot spot coincides with expending energy.”

“That’s what we’re trying to prove,” Darwin added.

“Can I stop running now?!” Sean shouted from upstairs.

“Yes!” everyone shouted back at him and he tromped down the stairs, panting, face completely red, fanning himself.

“I’m starved. Did you get us breakfast?”

“Miss Frost sent us a muffin basket!” Darwin balked, pointing to the demolished wicker basket on the coffee table. That’s right, Emma had said she was taking care of breakfast…With the morning he’d had, it was little wonder it had slipped his mind completely.

“Yeah but just bran,” Sean gagged. “Oh, and banana, but that had walnuts in it. And the poppyseed had almonds. And the blueberry ones—ugh.”

“God, Sean, what did you want?”

“It’s supposed to come with chocolate! There’s usually always at least one chocolate one…”

“Well we brought donuts,” Charles admitted, looking around for the bag.

“We left them in the car. We could go get them…?”

“That would be great, thanks,” Charles breathed, turning back to the computer and opening up another program. “Are these temperatures in real time?”

“Yeah, look here, go back—see this spike?”

 “Wow!”

Shaking his head in aggravation, Erik just grumbled under his breath about fucking liars and went out to the car alone. Right by his side—that’s what he’d said, right? Right by his fucking side; well was he at his side right now? _No_. And on top of that, he wasn’t even paying attention to his side, wasn’t paying attention to any part of him. He’d thought Charles had been asking for a spanking last night with that raw stunt in the hallway, but he was certainly begging for it today if this was going to be his attitude.

Erik got the donuts out of the car, already steaming up in the sunshine, and just stood there for a second, glaring up at the house. He had his keys. He could just toss the donuts on the front porch and go home, tell Emma he was sick, or just sit at his desk and pretend he’d gotten all the information he needed for the article. Charles probably wouldn’t even fucking notice.

Yet, sighing, Erik grit his teeth and walked back inside. Maybe after the first flush of excitement had worn off Charles would be able to remember his promises. If not, there were plenty of unused rooms to discipline him in.

“There!” Sean shouted, lunging at the computer screen everyone was huddled around. “It’s back!”

As Erik shut the door behind him, Darwin turned and just stared at him, and then Charles slowly turned to stare at him as well, and in the dual spotlight of their eyes he knew that something was wrong.

“What?” he croaked. “What is it?”

Darwin opened his mouth but nothing made it out before Charles cut in.

“Nothing,” the brunet said.

“Charles…” said Darwin, and the man turned on him, glaring meaningfully.

“Nothing,” he growled. He turned then, approaching Erik and peeling him from where he’d plastered himself against the door. “Come on, Erik—let’s go see what Hank has got. Sean, here’s your breakfast.”

“What was that?” Erik asked as Charles led him up the stairs. Charles glanced backwards and, apparently deciding their privacy was secure, he pressed Erik up against the stairwell wall and put his arms around his neck, smiling up at him.

“How are you? Still okay?”

“Yes,” Erik sighed, glad he’d decided to stick it through. “I’m fine. What were you looking at on the computer?”

“Violent pornography, of course,” said Charles, eyes glinting. “Tell me if you need a break.”

Erik built up enough malignancy to grouse, but Charles was already bounding back up the stairs, leaving him to complain to the back of his head.

“Will you be listening if I do or are you going to be hypnotized by work again?”

“Hmm?” Charles hummed, and opened the office door without giving him a chance to repeat himself.

 

There was a very gangly man-boy sitting huddled in front of a laptop typing in data to a spreadsheet, and when he looked up at them the light reflected off his glasses, making him look blind.

“Charles!” he exclaimed eagerly. “Great find here. We were a bit worried when we first arrived, but it’s looking up now. Oh, there was a bunch of stuff lying about the house when we got in. I put it all in the master bedroom so it’d be out of the way.”

“You aren’t investigating the master bedroom?”

“We haven’t really specified any particular area of interest yet. Why, did something happen in the master bedroom?”

“I need to get my stuff,” Erik interrupted, afraid Charles would answer him.

“Hm? Oh…oh, okay. I guess…I’ll go with you?”

“ _Yes_ ,” Erik growled, glad that Charles had at least suspected as much.

Hank glanced between them, and then did a double take, seeing Charles’ throat.

“Hey what happened to your…Um…Oh…So, is this…?”

“Oh, so sorry, Hank,” Charles jumped in. “This is Erik Lensherr. He’s the journalist we’re working with. Erik, this is Hank McCoy. He’s rather our all-around technical guru.”

Hank blushed slightly, smiling at Charles.

“It’s nice to meet you, Mr. Lensherr. I guess the other guy didn’t make it?”

Erik couldn’t help quirking his head to the side as he asked, “Who?”

“Only, Darwin said some charlatan was with you last night and got spooked, or pretended to get spooked, and that’s why you guys missed the arrival.”

Erik turned on his heel and left, hopefully before his blush could completely light up his face, and Charles growled, “Thanks for that, Hank!” before running after him.

“What!” Hank shouted after them as Erik stalked them down the hall to the main bedroom, flinging the door open.

Darwin was inside, and looked up from a digital camera he was holding. In his other hand he was holding the photographs Raven had given them.

“Have you seen these?” he asked, looking through Erik to Charles, and Erik realized it was true: Darwin had thought he was some fraud throwing a shit fit in a haunted house for his readership—and now he probably thought he’d thrown a shit fit in a haunted house to get Charles to come home with him. His embarrassment was almost physically painful.

“Er…” Charles mumbled, brushing past him in the doorway. “Some of them. Why?”

Instead of answering, Darwin held up the photos, and Erik’s heart imploded in his chest from pure mortification. On the front photo he recognized himself, leaning over the banister on the front porch, his ass very much on display.

 _I told you to get rid of that!_ he wanted to shout at Charles, but the man was already running away from him, taking the photo in his hands but not ripping it up so what the hell was he doing?

“What on Earth is that?” the brunet murmured.

“Yes,” Darwin said, looking at Erik. “It’s certainly…interesting.”

Blushing, Erik was about to turn and make an escape, but Charles called him forward, “Erik, come look at this.”

Gritting his teeth, he did so, waiting for the punch line, but rather than grabbing his ass and joking “I like the real thing better,” Charles was pointing at a white mark on the photograph, up near Erik’s head—a bright spark, like the flash before a lighter comes to flame.

“What is it?” he grumbled, refusing to acknowledge Darwin’s gaze, which he could _feel_ drilling into him, mining and looking for something he couldn’t fathom.

“Well, I don’t know,” Charles huffed, knocking him with his shoulder. Erik grimaced, feeling Darwin’s gaze heat up, on the trail of something. What was with the guy? Why did he have to look at him like that? Erik gazed anxiously over his shoulder to where the bathroom door was open, suddenly very on edge. “It certainly is interesting…”

“Yeah,” Erik growled. “I’ll have Emma put it right on the first page. Can’t we stop fucking staring at it now?” He yanked the photos out of Charles’ hands, stuffing them back into the folder, ignoring Charles’ hiss of pain.

“Watch it!” Darwin growled, seeming to get taller, like a dog putting up its hackles.

“It’s fine,” Charles muttered, sucking on his finger. “Just a papercut.”

“Why don’t you bring Hank his digital camera, see if he got anything like that in his photos?”

“Good idea,” Charles said around his finger, and took the camera from Darwin, turning to go. Erik went to follow, but Darwin’s hand on his arm stopped him.

“You probably want to start on the interviews, don’t you?” he asked, smiling warmly, encouragingly.

“What? Oh…right, the interviews…” Charles kept walking, staring at the camera, not even noticing he'd been waylaid.

“Come on. We can sit out on the front porch. Otherwise we might be in the way of the investigation.” Erik was unsure, thinking he could just interview him in the office with Charles and Hank right there, but Darwin laughed and patted him on the shoulder conspiratorially. “You want to get out of the house, don’t you? It can’t be too comfortable for you after…”

“I’m fine,” Erik growled, cutting him off, shifting uncomfortably as Darwin’s eyes hardened, losing their warmth. Great, now the guy was _sure_ he’d made the whole thing up last night to get into Charles’ pants. “Okay...okay. Let’s make it quick.”

They took the back stairs, and the first floor was silent and empty. Erik stopped on the last step, unsure. The basement door was open.

“Where’s Sean?”

“Probably up with the rest of them.”

“He didn’t go downstairs?”

“I doubt it. We can’t get the door open down there. Should we keep going?”

Taking a deep breath, Erik told himself it was a fucking pipe dream and that he had no reason to panic. He went to the front, reaching to grab the basement door to shut it soundly, confidently, fearlessly.

But in a moment, too fast for him to cry out or fight it, Darwin grabbed him, pushed him down the stairs, and slammed the door shut behind him.


	25. Chapter 25

Hurtled forward with surprising strength for the lithe man, Erik struggled to catch himself before he toppled headlong all the way to the landing, twisting his ankle and nearly getting whiplash he turned back to the door so quickly. It was no good, he realized as he pushed his weight against it, twisting at the unmoving handle, rattling the heavy wood in its frame.

“Darwin, what the fuck do you think you’re doing?! Let me out of here!” he shouted, throat tight, making his words sound more hysterical than threatening. Darwin, apparently, was not cowed.

 “I’m not sure what you did last night to pull one over on him so well,” Darwin said back through the thick wood, slow calm voice carrying easily over the sound of the rattling door-knob. “And I’m not sure what kind of mechanism you used to set off the hot spots today, but the gig is up.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?” he balked, bracing his foot on the step and slamming himself forward. The door didn’t budge. His heart was racing now, breath burning in his lungs as it sunk in that, somehow, Darwin was stronger than him, was actually capable of keeping him locked down here. “Charles! Charles you asshole get down here!”

“Hush now, don’t you think you’ve dragged him into this enough?”

“Fuck, fuck,” Erik hissed, struggling, trying to force his mind to come up with something, anything, to talk his way out of this, to convince Darwin to let him the fuck out. There was nothing there, nothing but a white, cold blanket of growing terror.

Struggling to at least dispel the blinding darkness if he couldn't dispel this whole scenario, he fumbled to turn on the light-- couldn’t help from crying out as the bulb shattered behind him. _Get me out of here, get me out of here. Get out, get out, get out._

“Darwin, I didn’t do anything. I didn’t do _anything_! Darwin, please let me out. Darwin, open the fucking door!” he managed to yell past the knot in his throat, kicking the door viciously.

He stopped immediately as he heard, far down in the darkness behind him, the sound of a rusty door shrieking on its hinges.

“You’re going to tell Charles what you did,” Darwin was saying to him, but his voice seemed a long way off, reaching him at the bottom of a deep, dark well. He turned slowly, watching the blackness of the stairwell with not a pinpoint of light to see by. “And then you’re going to leave. Miss Frost can send us a new journalist if she wants to, hopefully one with a better moral compass than yours.”

“Darwin,” he whispered, door tamping his shirt to his back with cold sweat as he pressed backwards, struggling to press _through_ the door—out, _out._ Below him a board creaked, and there was the low, soft shuffle of a body moving up the stairs towards him. “Darwin, let me out. God, oh god, let me out. Charles, Charles, Charles--”

“What’s going on down here? Where’s Erik?” Somewhere, he supposed, he recognized Charles voice, it’s tenor and tone, but here, in the dark, he couldn’t seem to respond to it.

“Please, god, someone, get me out of here, out of here. Charles--Char--”

His chest seemed paralyzed, he couldn’t draw breath, he _was_ drawing breath, huge gulps of breath, but it didn’t seem to be _getting_ to him. Like a mouse in the eyes of a snake, his only idea was to keep still, keep silent—let it not see him, let it not find him, let it not get him.

“What the fuck, Darwin! Get him out of there!”

The door rattled against his shoulders, the knob jounced in his hand, but all there was was him in this pitch-black stairwell and the scruff of footsteps coming closer.

“It’s stuck,” Darwin growled, and although Erik’s eyes were dry, were trying too hard to see to allow them to tear up, he felt as if he were crying.

Down in the depths of the stairwell, Erik heard a low, sinister chuckle. And then gravelly, dark growling. Not like an animal, but like a human being, snarling and growling like a vicious dog, and that somehow made it worse. The growls grew closer, playful and dangerous, the snapping of teeth. Something glinted in the dark, something closer than Erik had expected.

He snapped, turned, falling against the door, banging, rattling, screaming, and the growling grew in his ears until it was a roar, until his ears ached, until he could feel the vibrations in his bones.

“Get him out!” Charles was screaming, and someone was yelling for a crowbar, for a screwdriver, for anything.

There was a bright spark of light and smell of burning flesh and a sharp, hot pain between Erik’s shoulder blades, muting him and paralyzing him with agony—and it felt as if that spark burned him up inside, burned a hole right through him, and on the other side, at the depth of its burn, something welled up in his chest like an explosion or a scream and he couldn’t breathe past it.

The door opened and he collapsed through. But the blackness remained, and he fell into unconsciousness like a well.

 

* * *

He stared down at his shoes, at the hard wood floorboards beneath his shoes. It was quiet here, and he could hear his own breathing, slow and reassuring, his own heartbeat in his ears, gentle, lapping, like water on a dock.

The room was bright, painted white, with broad, tall windows letting in the light. He felt, finally, as if he could breath, as if he were surrounded by himself, isolated and safe on an island. A room, along, his room, felt like an oasis from insanity.

But almost the moment this serenity coalesced there was a shuddering of the floorboards, a scraping of metal on wood. Obligingly, confusedly, like bumping into someone he hadn’t even known was there, he shifted his foot back, away from the shudder. But it followed him, the grating insistence of it, tickling the underside of his foot through the sole of his shoe. He jumped back, breathing fitfully now, and saw motion between the sliver-thin gaps of the wood.

Someone was under the floor. And they were dragging a knife under his heels.

The smell of smoke flooded his nostrils. From the corner of his eye he saw the shadow of a man, and before he could turn his head it had disappeared into a puff of smoke and a dark, growling chuckle, and the whole room erupted into flame.

Shouting with surprise, with fear, fighting his way through fire and acrid smoke like burning corpses, Erik struggled for the windows but there were no windows, only smoke, heavy and greasy like walls in a slaughterhouse. Under him the burning floorboards buckled and heaved, and something, using the weakness of half-burnt wood, broke its way out.

* * *

“I don’t know why!” someone was hissing quietly. “It was right there and—god—I didn’t think _this_ was going to happen! I thought he was faking it!”

“Does it look like he’s fucking faking it?!” Charles growled back, voice high-pitched with _rage_ and Erik had never heard him like that before. “You should be ashamed of yourself! How could you play around with a house like this! I have never seen you bee so _despicably_ irresponsible, Mr. Munoz!”

“Charles, please!”

“Don’t talk to me—I’m too angry, don’t say another word to me.”

“I think he’s awake,” said a low, shy voice, and after a short scuffle there were cool hands caressing his brow, pushing his hair back, touching his cheek.

“God—he’s on fire. Erik?” Charles whispered. “Erik are you all right? Erik please, please say something.”

With more strain than he was used to, Erik managed to open his eyes, struggling to place himself.

He was on his back, on something soft but structured. Couch. There was a pillow under his head. He recognized the light fixture on the ceiling and the knickknacks on the mantle and the lace doilies on the coffee table. He was still in the goddamned house.

Charles was kneeling beside him, eyes huge and terrified. Sean was rocking himself on the other side of the coffee table, sheet-white and shaking. Hank was sitting on a footstool, watching quietly as if he were going to take notes. Darwin stood chewing his manicured nails in the doorway.

“I’m going to be sick,” he realized aloud, and in a dizzying flurry of motion and movement that made him feel even sicker, they got him to the bathroom.

Charles shut the door behind them immediately, slamming it on Darwin’s attempts to help, stroking Erik’s hair as he retched into the toilet. Nothing came up. All the sickness and smoke and terror were still inside him.

“Here,” Charles proffered, rinsing out a little cup that was being used as a vase, tossing the dead flowers in the sink, handing him the tap water. The man’s hand was shaking.

Erik was about to take it but then remembered the taste of corpses in his mouth and recoiled, shrinking back against the wall. Something shifted in his chest, like an egg about to hatch, and he wondered if he wasn’t actually going to be sick. Charles put the water down with a rapping clank and sat beside him, taking him in his arms and murmuring into his hair, stroking him, holding him very tightly. Erik kept his face buried in the man’s throat, and breathed in his own scent on him, tried to breathe past the smoke in his mouth and the burn in his chest.

His brain felt scorched out, nothing leftover but ash and rubble, leaving him hazy and sick. Hot and cold seemed to crash over him in waves, nausea a constant undertow, shaky, mindless: it was like the worst flu of his life, like the verge of fainting, like near-death. _I’m dying,_ he thought to himself, but he was too apathetic with affliction to care. He’d been burned through, had been left a barren, charred scrap of land. 

He had no idea how long he’d been sitting there when he slowly seemed to come back to reality, one sense at a time—the feel of Charles solid and guarding against him, the sound of the man murmuring into his hair, the smell of water and the cool dampness of something caressing his brow.

He opened his eyes, realizing they were closed, and Charles pulled back, looking over him anxiously. He obviously saw something he liked, smiling gently, stopping his lathing of his brow with the damp washcloth he’d gotten somewhere, pressing his palm against Erik’s damp forehead, smile widening.

“You blighter—you gave me quite a fright. You’re not feeling so hot now.”

“Was I before?”

“And you were murmuring to yourself. Nothing I could catch, but it was certainly eerie. I was beginning to think I should call the hospital, or maybe a priest.”

“No luck; I’m Jewish. You’d have to call my rabbi.”

Charles didn’t succumb to his attempt at joking, striking instead where his real interest lay. “Erik, what did you mean? What did you mean when you said the door was open?”

“What?” he asked, and his voice came out groggy, and he realized they must have been there for a very long time because his legs were completely asleep, his mind at least half so. He pulled away, stretching them out and groaning in pain. Charles clambered up beside him, helping to pull him to his feet. It didn’t work, and he had to sit down on the closed toilet, stretching them slowly in front of them before he could stand.

“When you came out. Right before you…you passed out. You said, ‘The door is open’.”

Erik frowned. He didn’t remember that. Didn’t _want_ to remember any of it.

“I guess because you guys had finally opened the goddamn door.”

Charles joined him in frowning, but Erik didn’t like the look of it. “Why? What other door would I have been talking about?”

“I don’t know. I thought maybe you meant the metal door.”

The blood froze in his veins, but he still managed to gasp, “Is that door open?”

“No, not at all,” Charles said quickly, rubbing his back as he saw the strain it had put on him. Erik hissed and jerked back at the sudden pain that flared up between his shoulder blades, unthinkingly trying to remember what had happened. He succeeded, unfortunately.

“He touched me. He touched me,” he gasped, struggling for breath, as it all came rushing back, struggling with his buttons as he jumped up, tearing at his clothes.

“Erik!” Charles cried, grasping his hands and stilling their palsy.

“He touched me, Charles. He set me on fire.”

The man stared up at him, worry evident, but he simply asked, “Where?” and helped Erik with his shirt, pulling it up and over his shoulders.

Shaking on weak, tingling legs, Erik held his shirt in place, staring down at his chest, probing it anxiously, afraid he’d find the thing that had been put there, not put there but let free there, expanding and taking over. Nothing moved against his hand. Why had he expected something to?

Charles’ own hand brushed over his shoulders, back and forth, starting high and going lower.

Erik gasped when they hit the mark on his spine.

“There?” Charles asked, and Erik’s face ignited with horrified, shameful horror. Because if Charles had to ask then that meant there was nothing there. Nothing real.

What had happened to him? What was happening to him? Was he going mad?

He pulled his shirt back down, ignoring Charles’ cries and pulling away from his grasping hands.

“Erik!” the man balked. “I’ve got to take photographs for evidence!”

“Why?” he growled. “You looked—there’s nothing there!”

“Not to the naked eye,” Charles argued. “But we’ve got blacklight, infrared…”

Erik just crossed his arms and pushed himself back against the wall, the spot aching against his clothes, tugging like a line through him, like a burn through to the center of his heart.

“I don’t care. I don’t care about your fucking evidence. I want to go home.”

“Now, Erik,” Charles huffed, taking him and sitting him down like an unruly child. “Let’s not be hasty.”

“I’m not being fucking hasty!” he growled up at the other man. “I can’t do this, okay. I thought last night was a fluke, but today—and Darwin—and…I just can’t, okay?”

Charles held him close, pressing him against his chest, and he realized he was hyperventilating, pressed his brow against Charles’ ribs as he tried to breathe.

“Erik, what _did_ happen last night?” the man asked as soon as he caught his breath. He went to pull away but Charles didn’t let him, dropping to his knees and holding his shoulders.

“Erik…” he said. “I know you’ve been through a lot. I know it’s hard to process. Don’t take all the burden on yourself. This is my job, Erik. Whatever it is, I’ve dealt with it before. Please, let me help you.”

Charles sat on his heels, watching him, begging him, his hands warm through his shirt, his mouth bitten red, his borrowed hoodie off-center and over-large.

“I can’t. Not here. I can’t,” he whispered, and his mouth felt shivery and ungainly with fear. _He’d hear him. If he told, he’d hear him and he’d come back for him—he’d burn him, he’d burn him again._

Something about his terror must have bled through, because Charles didn’t (continue to) pressure him.

“It’s okay,” the man assured, rubbing comforting patters on his knees. “We don’t have to talk about it now…I should get it on tape, anyway. My God Erik, but did you have any idea this place was such a hotbed of activity?”

“Of course not,” he huffed. “If I’d known I never would have come here.”

“And compared to yesterday…hardly a hiccup all day…”

“Can you please stop looking so excited over these so-called ‘hiccups’?”

“Well I’m sorry, I don’t mean to downplay the very frightening things that have been happening to you… but it _is_ exciting, scientifically speaking. I mean, if you had to go through any of this madness, at least your doing it is furthering the data of a very under-represented realm of science.”

“You think Marie Curie was _so_ lucky to die of radiation poisoning, don’t you.”

Charles’ face lit up red as a Christmas light. “I’m not saying it was the most pleasant way to go, but there’s plenty of pain in the world and much of it is a lot less useful than that.” Erik got the feeling the man was speaking from experience, and Charles seemed to realize that it certainly sounded that way because he blushed even darker and changed the subject in a stuttering huff. “Well—that—that’s enough of that. We should be getting back now, if you’re feeling recovered.”

“Back?”

“Yes! Well, I mean, there’s still a lot of work to do, data to process—I’m going to have an overhaul of that stairwell, and then the cupboard from last night, try to attain as much raw numbers as we can. Get the cameras out, the video recorders, record your interview—there’s tons to do.”

“Not for me,” Erik laughed, breathy with disbelief. “Charles—I told you and I meant it. I’m not going back out there.”

“What?” was all Charles could manage at first, with a wide-eyed, uncomprehending stare that made Erik want to laugh again—but he was worried it would turn hysterical and so didn’t risk it. “Erik,” the man began to argue in earnest in his silence. “Now come along, don’t start again. This is bigger than us. We have to see this thing through. We have to collect all we can while we can!”

“What the fuck are you talking about? Listen—you collect all the fucking data you want; I’ll wait at home.”

“What are we supposed to collect without you? Erik—the house only responds to you!”

Erik would have been shocked into silence, into terror, but his brain was coming back online with a vengeance and cut the terror off at the pass with pure reason.

“Don’t be fucking dumb,” he growled. “The house can’t _only_ respond to me because the house has been haunted for a hundred fucking years and I just got here yesterday. Who was it responding to for the last fucking century then?”

Charles huffed, obviously at an impasse there, and hurtled right over the impediment.

“I have no clue who _else_ it may be honed to, but I do know it _is_ honed to you and _you’re_ the one we have on hand.”

“No, I’m not. Because I’m going the fuck home. I’ll tell Emma you fucked me into a coma and I didn’t regain consciousness until tomorrow. She’ll be pissed but I’ll make up an article and she’ll recover when she realizes our readership is not that discerning.”

“Now, Erik,” the man tried sugar instead of spice, smiling sweetly, finger-combing his hair. “You needn’t be the least bit worried. You won’t be alone. I’ll be—“

“Right by my side?” Erik growled, catching the man’s wrist. “Sorry, Charles—I’ve heard that one before.”

He wished automatically he hadn’t said it, hadn’t struck the low-blow. The pained half-grunt that escaped the man, like someone had punched him in the gut but he didn’t want anyone to know, was one of the worst things he’d experienced that day, and that was _certainly_ saying something.

It shamed and guilted him more than any argument could, all the way to forfeit, weak and conciliatory, but wholly nonetheless.

“Hey,” he balked. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry okay? I know it’s a hassle, babysitting me like this. I know you have your own job to do. I know you can’t be joined to my hip all fucking day like an infant. Come on—forget it—let’s go, we’ll go back, it’s okay.”

“No,” Charles murmured, shaking his head, his face drawn and ashen. It was suddenly that same boy standing before him, the one from the school ID, pale and wary, quailing under the first blow and waiting for the next. His voice was faint and distracted, caught up in his own pain too much to think carefully about his words. “I promised you and I broke that promise. You don’t have to tell me I’ve disappointed you—I know—I know.”

Erik cut him off there, before the man’s voice broke even more, tugging him close but Charles was stiff and ungainly in his arms. His pale blue eyes were guarded, and filled to the brim with some kind of recognition, as if he saw now the resemblance between Erik and someone, something awful. 

“Stop that. Please. You haven’t. I’m not disappointed. I’ve never been less disappointed in another human being. If I’m angry it’s at that douchenozzle Darwin.”

“Don’t,” Charles laughed weakly, nudged him, pushing his head against Erik’s jaw. He pulled away in the next second, slipping free of Erik’s loose grip. “You have to understand. Darwin wasn’t trying to be cruel. He had no idea the house would react that way to you. He was only trying—inappropriately, it’s true—to be a friend, a good friend to me.”

“Is that all he is?” Erik asked slowly. “Just a friend?”

Charles’ eyes flashed quickly to his, intense and probing, incredibly cautious.

“Of course.” He seemed thoughtful for a moment, and discerning, smiling faintly. Erik could imagine his internal monologue: _He’s not them. I don’t need to remember them, that, whatever it was. It was an accident. He didn’t mean it. I don’t have to remember._ When the man turned back to him his smile was more secure, his strong visage back in place. He held Erik’s arm without a falter, drawing him to the door. “Of _course_.”


	26. Chapter 26

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this is late! I'm the worst :(

Charles’ shoe was tapping, fidgeting manically on Erik’s hip, and he grabbed the appendage and squeezed it hard to get it to stop. Still, the man was too distracted to so much as glance at him, twisted in his perch on the dining room table so that he could try and see what Hank and Darwin were doing lurking over the 

 _Why did I agree to this?_ he wondered, staring down the dual video cameras that were pointing straight at him like the barrels of two guns.

Charles seemed to be wondering the same thing, sitting atop the dining room table with his foot tapping on Erik's chair. He grabbed the man's foot, but Charles didn't seem to notice, twisting to monitor Darwin and Hank's progress.

“No, Darwin, the green button—Settings through the green button!”

“You want to come do it?” Darwin growled because this was not the first time Charles had started back-seat-setting-up-the-infrared.

“Yes,” Charles sulked, but retreated from the temptation: turned back around, rubbing his knees, realizing Erik was still holding his foot and pulling away

Erik hoped Darwin and Hank were too distracted to catch his pout on tape. Though he should be happy, ecstatic really, that Charles had managed to turn down an offer like that. He decided to glare at Darwin, but the man just glared back. He guessed the man had gotten over his guilt about nearly getting him ghost-killed. Or maybe it was because Erik had turned down his apologies, refused to listen to them--because because as soon as accepted an apology it would be ungentlemanly to loathe Darwin as much as his bitter sense of vendetta demanded. 

“We need to get this on film,” Darwin had struggled to explain when they finally quit the bathroom. This was before Erik had even really noticed Sean lugging in film equipment from the van, but after he'd spurned the man's apologies. “None of this is worth anything if we can’t document it.”

“What?” Erik had growled immediately, yanking Charles’ arm away where Darwin had grasped it in his eagerness. “You don’t believe me?”

Charles had stopped him before he could get any more antagonistic than that, putting a staying hand on Darwin’s shoulder as well, saying, “It’s not about belief, Erik. It’s about proof. And I happen to agree. If we can capture these manifestations on visible format, it could be a real breakthrough. We’ve got to at least try.”

"Hank, can you set up flood lights in the stairwell? I want to get a camera set up there. Sean, do you have the GoPros set up in the library?"

“Library? Did something happen in the library?” Charles questioned.

“Not exactly...But Hank says there’s a really promising heat flux there.”

“I need you to set up another in the master bedroom, too, when you have a minute…” Charles said, an edge of glumness sinking into his voice. Erik had the urge to rub his back, or ruffle his hair, and was halfway to doing so when Charles shifted away slightly, giving him a warning glance. Right. Professional. Can’t have the team seeing you be a real human being. He dropped back and tried to ignore Darwin’s nit-picking gaze.

“Why can’t you do it yourself?” the man asked slowly.

Charles didn’t answer him.

"Sean, can you be a dear and set up a GoPro upstairs in the main bedroom? Just above the bed facing the bathroom—make sure the door’s open. And can you please grab my laptop? And Erik’s satchel, also.”

Everything seemed to move too quickly. It seemed hardly a moment before Erik was sitting there as in front of the firing squad, Hank suddenly beaming with pride.

 “Okay,” the lanky man beamed, enjoying this blow too much. “I think we’ve got everything ready. I’m going to start recording.”

Charles got down off the table and moved away, cattycorner to him, close but out of the way of the cameras. Erik tried to ignore the heavy weight this left in his stomach, tried not to start fidgeting, shivering.

 _Don’t,_ he wanted to cry out, like when he was a child realizing he had not quite steeled himself for a vaccination as well as he’d initially thought. Like when he’d broken his leg and the doctor had said, _Okay, I’m going to count to three and then you’re going to feel a little pain_ , and it had sounded so doable at 1 but when they got to 2 he’d changed his mind and demanded they start over. _I’m not ready yet. I’m not ready._

Sean seemed equally on edge about the little experiment, even though it had nothing at all to do with him. “I’m not so sure this is a good idea,” he squeaked suddenly, wringing his hands, cowering behind Hank. “I mean, what if it comes back?”

“This might come as a surprise to you,” Charles hummed, turning on his laptop, eager to return to his first love: work. “But, as paranormal investigators, we do actually _want_ it to come back.”

 _I don’t,_ Erik thought, whole-heartedly. He stared at his hands and willed them to stop shaking.

 _Don’t press record yet,_ he looked up to say, but the dual red lights were already glaring at him like two eyes, and behind them were Darwin and Hank, both watching, waiting, for something to happen. Erik pressed his hands against his thighs and tried to breathe around the aching in his chest.

“Friends,” Charles sing-songed, smiling at the hypnotized men, breaking them from their staring match with Erik. “Don’t you think we’d be better off getting some work done while this records? It could take a while, after all.”

And take a while it did.

At first Erik couldn’t get himself down from his anticipatory high, despite the inaction—Sean had gone off to possibly write his will, Hank was comparing temperature data with Charles, Darwin was analyzing the MADS sensors and keeping an eye on the stairwell. Still there was nothing Erik could do but stare at the red, piercing dots on the camcorders and wait, wait for it. But it was better than where his eye wanted to land, where it insisted on probing with the entirety of his peripheral vision: the gaping hole of the stairwell door and its illuminated depths, like floodlights in a coffin.

He jerked out of his hypnotized staring only when Charles reached over, under the table and gripped his knee, looking at him with eyes like two calm seas and smiling his full-lipped, trouble-making smile, saying, “Oi. Get some work done, slacker.”

Choking on a laugh, Erik did just that, willing his limbs into movement, his brain into action.

He grabbed the satchel Sean had brought down for him, took out his H2 from the side pocket and was surprised to find his cell phone there as well, but it was dead. Also inside the satchel was his waistcoat and belt from last night, which he managed to keep from blushing over, he hoped. He slid Charles the tidy ziplock bag of clear buttons he found, and the man wasn’t so lucky, cheeks going fire-engine red in no time flat, making him chuckle anew.

He’d never written an article by hand before, and didn't really feel like learning after the day he'd had so far, so he messed about instead, listening to his interview with Charles on his headphones instead. That counted as work, didn't it? He was at least still going to charge Emma for it.

That took his mind off things, if only because he got to relive how incredibly awful he’d been to the man on first meeting him. What kind of masochist was Charles that he’d thought the douchebag on that tape was a good investment of a passionate night? He wasn’t sure how he’d pulled last night, or, rather, that morning, off, but he certainly hoped it had been in spite of his shitty first impression rather than a secret affinity of Charles' towards shitty people.

Darwin was certainly shitty enough, and Charles seemed to get along with him.

Frowning, doodling on his legal pad, Erik couldn’t help but let his mind wander down that well. Charles said they were just friends, and he had said he wasn’t dating anyone; Erik was sure he’d said that. But still…there seemed to be too much going on there for friendship to be the end all be all of that relationship. Darwin was too interested in Charles, and Charles was too careful of Darwin for that to be the case. If they were just friends right now, if Charles wasn’t dating anyone right now, was that the way they both wanted it? Was that the way they both planned it? Was that the way it had always been?

Erik’s heart tightened painfully in his chest.

He’d fallen into Charles’ life all of yesterday. Maybe it wasn't the open field he’d first imagined—was maybe full of early birds, prior engagements, pre-promises. Were there parts of the man already carved up for people who had been at the table long before Erik had even thought to place his bid?

 _No._ Erik decided, forcing himself to calm down, tearing off his paper full of anxious scribblings and shoving it in his satchel.

Maybe Charles wasn’t straight off the manufacturer’s table like Erik had stupidly pretended, maybe he came with a past, but so did Erik, so did anyone who wasn’t sixteen and fresh to the fight. Charles was no bold-faced liar. If he said there was nothing between him and Darwin besides friendship then that’s all there was to it. Erik had to take that on faith, or what was the point? And if Darwin was unhappy with their non-relationship he could fucking worry about that him damn self. Erik wasn't going to focus on outside intrigues. He knew what he wanted, and that's what he had to keep in his cross-hairs. He wanted to be with Charles; he knew that fully, completely.

Charles might have rescued him from a couple of ghosts, but Erik was going to do the more enjoyable thing. Erik was going to take the real plunge; was going to ask that damned ghost-hunter to date him.

“ _We prefer paranormal researcher,_ ” the man’s voice said through his headphones. “ _Or investigator if you must.”_

“ _Of course_ ,” his own voice sneered back, before getting cut off. Erik mentally promised to pay the brunet back a thousand-fold for how awful their first meeting had been.

In the next moment he was too distressed to think much of anything.

With a click and a fumble the first interview was over, and Erik was surrounded by the noisy silence only an empty tape could give, the soft sound of wind in a tunnel, steady waves on a far-off beach; then slowly, layering up, there was the shuffle of movement, the clack of something hitting metal, the schluff of a body hitting the ground: the grunt of his own breath as his ribs had readjusted to the wooden flooring. The soft, quiet whispering of the people in the vent.

Even holding his breath, Erik couldn’t make out what was being said, no matter the automatic straining of his ears, his mind; it made no sense, just the whispering, whispering, of people (how many people?) milling about, talking secrets amongst themselves. Fragile sounds made their way above the gentle sea of noise: a low, pained moan, a soft, breathless almost-cough, a woman weeping.

Erik’s heart, or something close by his heart, twisted so wrathfully in his chest that he jerked in his seat, would have cried out if he’d been able to even breathe around the pain of it.

But in a moment, before Charles or any of the others could fully form their surprised yelps of concern, the pain had dissipated, disappeared, leaving an ache no worse than when he'd first sat down. He was left on the edge of his seat, just as shocked as everyone else at his antics, at his sudden violent flinching.

“I’m all right,” he growled, blushing, pushing his headphones off and stopping his tape. “I’m all right, it was just fucking heartburn or something! It was nothing. Calm down!”

Darwin had come around from the kitchen counter, whether to check on him or the cameras, Erik wasn’t sure. Either way, the man just frowned at his demanding barking and glanced at Charles, who was already out of his seat and refusing to be bossed around.

“What was it? What happened?” Charles demanded, rubbing his chest where Erik was palpitating. “You’re warm again.” The man moved his hand up to Erik’s forehead and Erik almost laughed, it was such a motherly, playing-doctor thing to do. He caught the man’s hand and rubbed his stubbly cheek against it; he was sure to let go before Charles could pull away.

“I’m fine,” he assured. “I’m just not as used to pure sugar for breakfast as you are.”

“Darwin?” Charles asked, looking over his shoulder.

The black man just shook his head, scowling at the camera screens. "Nothing."

Charles sighed, having the gall to sound a bit frustrated, and collapsed back petulantly in his chair.

“We can't just sit around here all day waiting for something to happen. What we need to do is figure out what is triggering these violent reactions, otherwise how on earth are we supposed to instigate it? We need to _think_.”

“Well,” Darwin nodded seriously, “Let’s think then. What situations brought about the manifestations before? Could we recreate those parameters?”

“No!” Erik balked.

“I’m only talking hypothetically,” Darwin assured.

Erik refused to be assured.

“Well stop talking about it at all! This shit isn’t happening to _you_. You don’t give a fuck what instigating it means, what it feels like.”

“Erik please calm down,” Charles demanded. “No one’s talking about locking you in the basement again so please don’t pretend as such.”

“It seems to be focused on Mr. Lensherr,” Hank pointed out needlessly. “Maybe we should explore what exactly it is about him that’s drawing a reaction. It might turn out to be something we can recreate with a...a more _willing_ participant, if need be.”

“Maybe it’s his sunny personality,” Darwin muttered. Although it was loud enough for Erik to hear, Charles didn't seem to notice.

“Great idea, Hank! Maybe we could recreate our Colorado experiment? No, no, too messy…”

“What about Hesselius’ experiment in England?”

Erik hit the table, louder than he was wanting but still, it shut everyone up.

“I. Am not. A fucking _labrat._ ”

“Oh, Erik,” Charles laughed good-naturedly, patting his shoulder. “Of course you’re not a _labrat_! Anyway, it’s not really even an _experiment_ in the traditional sense—Hesselius’ test was simply sort of… an interview. You’re not afraid of a little interview, are you?”

“How the hell is an interview supposed to help you?” he grumbled, not enjoying getting laughed at, even if it was just Charles.

“Well,” Hank jumped to explain, pushing his glasses up excitedly. “The tactic he used is: you ask a series of questions and basically…well…wait to see which one the site responds to, and then you refocus your questions to that, and so on and so forth until…well…”

“Until what? What happened at the end of Hesselinny or whoever’s experiment?”

Erik was sure he didn’t want to know because everyone was suddenly blushing and picking at their nails, but Sean answered regardless, in his own way.

“Is that the one with the guy who died or the guy who went crazy?”

Charles turned in his seat to glare at him, and was thus unable to stop Hank from saying, “Both, technically.”

“That is completely irrelevant,” Charles growled to shut them both up. He turn a reassuring smile to Erik and patted his hand. “There were extenuating circumstances. It’s not indicative of the stratagem. The chances of you going crazy or dying are negligible, I promise.”

Erik found himself less than relieved.  


	27. Chapter 27

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry I'm such crap at uploading, so here's an appeasement chapter! It comes so quick on the heels of the last one because it's comparatively uneventful and I didn't want you to wait another week for almost-uneventful and then get mad at me and vow to never read anything I write ever again, or else glare at me through your computer screen (I can feel that, you know). So here! My apology chapter! Fingers crossed that I can at some point stay on schedule with these things so appeasement posts become a thing of the past... A girl can dream.

Darwin pulled up a chair beside the cameras and stared at Erik like an animal that was going to do an exciting trick. Hank pulled up a chair and sat beside Charles, staring at Erik while simultaneously jotting in a notebook, apparently under the impression that if he looked away for even a moment, he’d miss it. Sean stood behind Hank, wringing his hands and staring at Erik as if he could explode gore and cruor over the lot of them at any given moment. Charles sat at his laptop, hands poised like daggers over the keyboard, but on his mouth was a quirking smile he was struggling to suppress, as if Erik sitting there squirming under all these probing eyes was something he found almost adorably hilarious, but knew he shouldn’t.

Erik scowled and kicked him lightly under the table, making him wince, making him lose control of his smile momentarily.

“Shall we begin?” Charles coughed, rubbing his shin.

“I’ll start,” Darwin said eagerly, turning to Erik with relish. “Have you ever experienced paranormal activity before?”

He took a moment to curtail the roll of his eyes, sitting back in his seat, crossing his arms.

 “No,” he said, and didn't give him the satisfaction of elaborating, turning to Hank instead. 

“Oh,” the lanky man chirped, surprised at being up to bat so soon, messing with his glasses, straightening his hair. “Um…have you…have you ever had an out of body experience?”

“A what?” Erik scoffed, frustrated already. This was showing all the signs of being a total waste of time. 

“He means, have you ever almost died,” Charles explained, waving his hand flippantly. “Near-death and out-of-body experiences have been shown to have a direct correlation with single-focus paranormal activity.”

Erik stared, and so did Sean, but luckily the red-head beat him to the embarrassing verbalization.

“I have no idea what you just said,” Sean gasped.

Sighing, Charles said to the boy, “It really would be easier if you read our literature, Mr. Cassidy.”

Turning to him, Charles continued, exasperated but committed. “When a site focuses almost solely on a single individual, it’s almost always related to a past near-death or out-of-body experience (not counting demonic haunting or natural sensitivity, but that almost never results in a _single_ - _site_ phenomenon). Have you ever almost died? Have you ever been hospitalized? Have you ever been sick to the point where it is within the realm of possibility that you could have died from it?”

Erik very nearly wanted to laugh, because Charles was inexplicably almost cute when he was this excitable, when his hands were cutting through the air as if he wanted to strike out at this mystery, when he spoke so breathlessly, when his eyes flashed so passionately…

“No.” Erik tried to appease his obvious disappointment by explaining. “I’ve never had a thing wrong with me. I broke my leg when I was sixteen, but it was a slide-tackle, not a ghost-attack. I’ve always had pretty good health—I’ve never even been to the hospital, apart from my leg.”

Hank looked up, brow quirked curiously.

“Never? You’ve never been to the hospital? Apart from the…the soccer injury, I mean?”

“He’s exaggerating,” Darwin accused, rolling his eyes, making Erik want to growl or pout _. What the hell did he know?_

“I’m not exaggerating. My mother hated hospitals. I wasn’t even born in a hospital.”

It was obvious Darwin wanted to continue to argue the point, but Charles was asking another question so he couldn’t.

“But surely you must have gone in…for check-ups, for vaccinations, for childhood illnesses?”

“My dad took me to the middle school to get some vaccinations, I remember, but my mom wouldn’t go.”

“Was it simply hospitals she hated or the medical profession as a whole, then?”

“What? Oh…” Erik tried to think back; it was all so long ago. “No, I guess she didn’t much care for doctors in and of themselves. She must have been the only Jewish mother in existence to not want her son to grow up to be a doctor.”

Erik nearly bit his tongue on his next words, nearly fell out of his seat—upstairs, there was a floor-shaking _BANG!,_ like a firecracker going off, and everyone sat rooted in their seats, staring at the ceiling. Erik’s knuckles were turning white on the edge of the table.

“Sean,” Charles murmured. “Go see what that was.”

“ _Are you out of your fucking mind?!_ ” the boy squeaked back. “I’m not going the fuck up there!”

“I’ll go,” Hank gasped eagerly, and raced up the back staircase.

“The doctor thing? Jewish?” Darwin hissed to Charles.

“That or the mother,” Charles murmured back.

Erik started to feel queasy.

“The GoPro fell off the wall,” Hank explained glumly when he returned. At his words, everyone’s excitement fell off immediately—Erik was even able to smile a little in relief when Hank turn frowning at Sean. “You put it up with Duct Tape? _Really?_ ”

“What?” the boy balked. “I didn’t have time to screw it in… It was creepy up there…I’ve never had any complaints before!”

“Well consider this your first then,” Hank grumbled, throwing himself back into his chair.

“Where were we?”

“Might be the Jewish question,” Darwin said, checking his notes. Hank shook his head though, frowning.

“I don’t know. I mean, my mother was Jewish. I’m technically Jewish…”

“Are you really?” Charles asked, surprised. “Gosh. I always thought you were… I don’t know…Methodist or something. Aren’t you Methodist?”

“Um, my dad’s a Mennonite…I guess I’m mostly…Agnostic.”

“You can’t be,” Darwin groaned.

“Darwin,” Charles warned quickly, cutting off what was obviously an expected soap box speech.

“All I’m saying is, why go all that way towards disbelief and stop with just one more step to go, that’s all.”

Hank opened his mouth to argue back but shut it when Charles shot him a look. _Now is **not** the time, _it seemed to say.

“Okay, what about your mother,” Hank said instead, frowning at his own notes. “How’s your relationship with her?”

Erik felt his skin go cold with shock. It was a long time, he realized, since he’d met anyone who didn’t _know_. In this town, people knew what his grandfather’s favorite color was—he’d never had someone just _not know_.

“What?” Hank asked, quailing under what was obviously a very black glance from Charles.

Erik cleared his throat and tried to come up with the proper words.

“My mother…my mother…died. When…when I was fifteen.”

Darwin perked up eagerly, actually smiled, making Erik hate him all the more. Charles just waved down his giddiness as if it were completely understandable, yet unfortunately misplaced.

“My mother’s dead, too,” the brunet pointed out with disappointment.

Erik couldn’t help his jolt of surprise, even if it _was_ on tape now.

“You never told me that!” he gasped.

“Oh gosh!” Darwin gasped as well, just as scandalized. “You _didn’t_? But…but you two have known each other so _long_!”

Charles bit down on his laugh, turning it into a furtive and ill-contained smile, eyes crinkling, refusing to be talked out of humor at his expense.

Somewhere inside him his hatred ignited into something more passionate, and he glared at Darwin with the heat of it.

The man just glared coolly back at him, refusing to sweat. _I don’t care for you much, either_ the look seemed to assure. Guilt only took Darwin so far, it seemed, and Erik had apparently run that tab down quickly. He couldn’t help but think the reason was Darwin’s own jealous love of Charles, and started gnashing his teeth bitterly. Let the man be jealous, let him be cool and feisty all he wanted—just don’t let him make Charles smile like that. Don’t let him make Charles laugh. Don’t show Erik that he wasn’t the only person on earth Charles could have a good time with.

“How did she die, if you don’t mind me asking?”

“I do mind,” Erik growled, and everyone’s eyebrow’s jumped, staring at him, as if why on earth should he mind?

“It wasn’t a ghost, okay?” he assured with a grown.

“That’s not what he meant,” Charles assured. “More like…was it… ahem… violent? Sudden?”

Erik scowled at his hands clutched together on the tabletop. What was the least he could say to get them off his back about this?

“She had an aneurism and died during surgery,” he grit out. “Can we change the subject now?”

“So she died at the hospital?” Darwin asked, eager.

Charles could tell he was already at the end of his rope, because he put the man off, scoffing and shaking his head, “Come now, Darwin, what are we saying? The house hates people related to people who died at hospital? We’d all be getting responses, if that were the case.”

“Maybe,” Hank struck on. “Maybe we’re going about this all wrong. Maybe we’re being much too complicated. I mean…if we just look at it in current terms. Why is the house responding to him and not us? I’m sort of Jewish, he’s sort of Jewish.” Erik didn’t point out that he wasn’t _sort of_ Jewish, he was absolutely Jewish. “His mother’s dead, your mother’s dead. But there’s something that separates us completely:” Here, Hank paused, glancing eagerly from interested face to interested face, drawing it out. Finally, just before he was about to lose his audience, he explained: “He’s from here and we’re not!”

There was complete silence as everyone simply stared at Hank.

“Huh,” Darwin said finally.

“A _regional_ -focused paranormal response,” Charles murmured to himself, eyes flashing with thought.

“Does that mean I don’t have to worry?” Sean perked up.

“How long have you lived in Avalon?” Darwin asked suddenly, focused tightly on him.

“Always,” Erik admitted. “I was born here. My father was born here; his father was born here…”

“And your mother?”

“She was born in D.C. But her family moved here when she was 12.”

“She moved _to_ Avalon?” Darwin questioned. “What on Earth brought them here?”

Erik shrugged. “I don’t know. It was my grandfather’s idea. I don’t remember why. My dad might know.”

“Have either of your parents been to the Ash Creek House? Did either of _them_ experience anything here?”

Erik couldn’t help but scoff, nearly choked on his scoff, actually. His mother! Here at the Gone-Away House!

“No,” he said resoundingly, not able to suppress his disbelieving chuckle. Really. The thought of it! “No way.”

“Not even when they were children?” Charles pressed. “Children do things like that, you know.”

Because it was Charles who said it, Erik actually pretended to think about it for a moment, answering in a calmer voice.

“Definitely not. My mom was too old, well, old-souled to mess about with juvenile trash like that. Anyway, my grandfather would have flayed her alive. He hated this house. He thought it should be burned to the ground.”

In the pause of his words, clear as crystal, there was a gentle squeak of floorboards under an unexpected weight. Everyone else messed about glancing at each other, wondering who had done it, but Erik didn’t bother. His eyes went immediately, certainly, to the source of the sound. To the stairwell.

Slowly, one by one, the other eyes followed his, and although the camera stared blindly into the depths, although the lights lit its nothingness to sunny brightness, Erik felt the something he couldn’t see.

In his bones he felt its presence, in his thundering heart, in his burning skin.

There was another creak, quieter now, farther down, retreating, or else beckoning.

Erik was made dizzy by his sudden change of altitude, was surprised to find himself on his feet, grabbed the table to stop himself from going any farther, shocked at himself, chest a sharp, burning ache.

 _No,_ he reminded himself. _We don’t want to go down there. We don’t want to follow it._

“What is that?” Charles gasped, staring down between his feet, straining his ears for what Erik could barely make out over the din of his own heartbeat: the muffled clicking of a crank, the metallic rattling of chains.

“It’s my mother,” someone said, and when he looked up to see who had said it everyone was staring at him—worriedly, curiously, in horror—and he realized it’d been him. He’d said it. And, even worse, the two red eyes of the dual cameras were staring at him, recording him saying it, recording his madness—this had to be madness.

Snatching up his satchel, kicking his chair out of his path by accident, Erik barely heard the complaining cries of forbearance that was thrown up behind him. He went out the backdoor and let it slam behind him.

That was it. He was done.

He was hearing voices in vents. He was tasting dead bodies in water. He was seeing people in reflections on phones. He was aching from wounds that left no marks. He was feeling people that weren’t there. He was going fucking crazy as a loon.

Erik had never gone mad before. He’d thought he was, for a while maybe, just when his mother had died, when his whole world was upside down, but he’d recovered from that in time and never succumbed again. If he hadn’t been driven mad by the loss of his mother then he wasn’t going to let himself be driven mad by this house. He wouldn’t allow it a greater precedence in his life than his own mother. He had to leave, get away from it, before it amassed that power without his permission. He had to get away, not for his comfort or libido but for his own beleaguered sanity. If Charles couldn’t understand that then he wasn’t worth it. Despite everything about the man that struck to the contrary, if he lacked this then he wasn’t worth it.


	28. Chapter 28

A/N: Sorry it's late! I was camping all weekend. It was a blast, but it's nice to get back to civilization (and my computer) as well! Hope you all had just as nice weekends :)

* * *

Erik checked his trouser pockets. He checked his jacket pockets. He threw the contents of his satchel all across the smothering heat of the back seat, yelling inarticulately at nothing, nothing, _more nothing_.

_Where were his fucking keys?_

He slammed the door as hard as he could and when that didn't get it out of his system he punched it for good measure, hopping on one foot and holding his fist painfully, cursing up a storm.

But the storm passed, leaving him huffing and tingling but clear, capable.

Pushing up from his lean on the car, he stalked to the front door to shout at Charles to give him his fucking keys back.

He could hear the voices as soon as he stepped foot on the first step, and quailed for a second before he recognized the hissing British tones.

"Be serious, Darwin! He's a bit too old for a poltergeist!"

"What other explanation is there? If it started when he was younger—it's not too much to think—"

"It didn't start when he was younger. He's never had something like this happen to him before—he didn't even _believe_ in the paranormal before!"

"So he says."

There was an angry pause, and when Charles' voice returned it was snarling, quaking with anger or fear. "So that's what you think. He's lying. You all think he's pulled the wool over my eyes, he's got one over on me—"

"I think," Darwin growled back. "That whatever's going on here, it's coming from him. _Charles, we can't let him leave!"_

Shaking but silent, Erik went back to his car, climbed into the front seat, and locked the doors, ignorant of the stifling heat.

 _This isn't happening, this isn't happening,_ he repeated to himself, clutching the steering wheel and staring straight ahead. _What was he going to do?_

Call his mother--he wished. Call his father. Couldn't call Emma—she'd tie him to the door if she caught wind of this. Call-

Mark!

He lunged into the back seat enough to scramble for his phone, squeaking with barely contained screams of rage when he remembered it was fucking dead. It was dead. He was dead. They were never going to let him leave. They didn't believe him. They _wouldn't_ believe that it was all internal, that there was nothing there, that he wasn't a poltergeist or a catalyst or some resonating apparatus for ghosts—they wouldn't believe he was mad, even if he was mad, and what else could he be? If Darwin had thought it was all in Erik's head before, that he was making it all up, he apparently didn't believe it any more. He was never getting out, _never_ getting out of here. He was distracted from his anxious reveries when he heard a door slam.

Charles was jogging down the front steps with an angry, sharp snap in his walk, duffel bag weighing down his shoulder. Erik was distracted with hope for a second before he realized it wasn't Charles' overnight bag but his work bag. He clapped his hands over the lock, as if Charles had somehow worked out how to unlock doors with his mind in the last ten minutes.

He only clutched it harder when Charles got close enough to shout at him, "Get out of the car!"

"I'm not going back in there!" he yelled back, voice cracking badly. Knuckles white on the lock, his hands couldn't shake, but the rest of him made up for it, and Charles must have noticed him on the precipice of panic because he stopped in his tracks, hands up and visible, as if Erik was a first-time criminal with an itchy trigger-finger.

Or maybe a snarling animal, backed into a corner, based on the quiet, calming tone of his voice when he spoke. "No, Erik, I know. I'm not going to ask you to go back. Okay? I'm not."

Confused, not quite processing or trusting, Erik didn't dare let go of the lock.

Slowly, so as not to alarm him, Charles lowered his hands, opening the duffel bag enough for Erik to see the blanket and muffins there.

"I thought we could go for a picnic. Take a break. It was getting a bit intense in there, wasn't it?"

Erik looked up from the bag to Charles smiling gently, encouragingly. Erik did not understand.

"You've been through a lot this morning, hmm? I thought we could go relax for a minute, just you and I. Get away from it all." _Get away…_ "It's such a nice day and all, and the team's got it under control, I think. They can handle it on their end…"

Seeing that Erik was listening, was capable of listening over his remnant horror, Charles' smile took on a sultry tilt.

"Come on—there must be someplace around here where we can spread a little blanket, be by ourselves, enjoy…the sunshine…Isn't there?"

Finally the words seemed to filter down to him, and Erik's hands relaxed their grip, tingling, mouth cracking into a hesitant smile. Well, yes, he could think of a place or two nearby where he wouldn't mind being alone with Charles. But he didn't quite unlock the doors yet, watching Charles nervously for a second. The man's smile was sunny and enticing, eyes squinting in the harsh sunlight, exactly as blue as the sky—but his shoulders were squared, determined, the spine straight, taut.

"Do you promise?" Erik found himself asking, fighting an urge to stick his hand out and demand a pinky swear.

Charles' stance seemed to relax, and he smiled widely now.

"I promise. Now, really, pooch, get out of that car. It's got to be forty degrees in there."

Slowly, unwracking his body from where it had been tensed at every joint, Erik managed to unlock the door and step tenderly out, leaning against the car door for a moment, exhausted now that adrenaline was running out. Charles smiled, pityingly, or compassionately and stepped forward with a sad chuckle, fingering the stubble at Erik's jaw.

"You look a sad state," the man said, frowning sympathetically.

Nodding, Erik took the man by the hips, pulling him in a little closer, resting his hands there as on a talisman. Nothing could happen to him as long as he was touching Charles. Those were the rules. 

"I don't think I much care for this house."

"No," Charles laughed. "I gathered that much."

"I'm not sorry," he growled suddenly, mostly because he had been about to say that he _was_ sorry. "I'm not sorry. You can't ask me to go back in there. I know it makes it hard between you and Darwin, but I'm not sorry."

Charles just ran his fingers through his hair, unperturbed. "Don't worry about Darwin."

But Erik couldn't quite manage that. Couldn't quite manage not to grin when he asked, "Was he pissed? When you stormed out of there, I mean? When he found out I wasn't coming back?"

Charles' eyes flashed to his for a moment, long enough for Erik to catch their wary sheen, but then they were looking away again, bright and sunny.

"Don't worry about him. Now come on. Let's lay down a blanket and work on our tans—or whatever it is people do in atrocious heat like this."

* * *

 

Before they started off, Charles stowed his hoodie in the car, skin already flushed with heat, and had Erik leave his jacket there too—he was right that it was much too hot for all these layers, although Erik didn't quite agree with him when the man suggested he leave his shirt there too.

"You've got your undershirt," Charles pointed out. "And this black is only going to make you hotter."

Erik persisted though, pushing Charles' insistent hands away from his shirt.

"I'm not walking around the countryside in my undershirt," he growled, but he did roll up his sleeves.

"Here," Charles said as he led them around the car, into the grass before the puny forest. "Help me with the blanket."

Erik didn't though, just stood and stared, between the spot Charles had picked and the house, not thirty feet away.

"You've got to be fucking kidding me!"

"What?" Charles asked, eyes wide and innocent when he looked up from his bag.

"We're not eating _here_! We're not…we're not sitting here right in fucking front of it!"

"Don't be silly!" Charles laughed, yanking the blanket out and struggling to set it up on his own because Erik didn't make a single move to help. Instead, feet planted securely, he growled with all his strength.

"Give me my fucking keys."

"Are you going to help me or what? I say, you back country boys aren't nearly as chivalrous as I'd been led to believe." The man wasn't sounding so flippant though when Erik went back to his car.

"Erik!" Charles squawked, sprinting to slam the door shut before Erik could clamber in.

"I'm not sitting here right in fucking front of it and have it stare at me all day!" he shouted, going for the back seat but Charles lunged that door shut as well.

"Okay!" the man yelped, arms spread wide across the doors so Erik couldn't try again. "Okay, we don't have to! Wherever you want, okay? Just…not too far. Deal?"

Erik just sort of blinked for a moment, staring. Had…had he just won an argument? Against _Charles?_ He smiled with a sort of heady disbelief and nodded, helping the Brit take up the blanket. He could only hope he had as much luck when he asked the man to date him.

* * *

"So where are you taking me?" Charles asked, voice hardly showing its pout as he maneuvered carefully around the overgrown blackberry brambles that tried to push them into the creek on their right. Erik looked back, partly to watch the man's progress and partly to enjoy the sight of the Gone-Away House disappearing in the dappled forest behind them.

"There's a lake not too far from here. It'll be packed probably, on a day like today, but I know a nice secluded spot there," he explained, grinning. Charles looked up from his foot placement, grinning as well.

"You're insatiable. Will you not have your fill till you've _actually_ crippled me?" Erik found that he'd missed the playful teasing, the quirk of Charles' mouth when he was being a smart-aleck. When had that gone away? When had it taken a back seat to the man's work? Erik couldn't deny that he liked Charles better with no work to distract the man from his own playful harlotry.

"I don't think you'd mind it if I did," he laughed back, reaching to help Charles over a big rock in the creek wall and sliding his arm around the man's waist when he'd overcome it, enjoying the broadening path that allowed them to walk side by side, even if it was through a cow pasture.

"Oh of course," Charles said with a roll of the eyes. Erik noticed the man didn't attempt to slip away from him, now that there was no one to see them. "I've always dreamed of being in a wheelchair. And what a great explanation I'd have. Oh, this old thing? Necessary I'm afraid, when Magnus comes to visit."

Erik laughed outright, having forgotten Charles' pet name. He'd never had anyone name part of his anatomy before. Strangely, he thought he _liked_ it. He tightened his grip on the man, pulling him closer to his side, and Charles went with it, nuzzling quickly into his jaw on a downstep before pulling back.

"So is this a common spot for you? Is this where you bring all your lovers?"

"It would be apt," Erik nodded. "The place used to be called Lovers Lake, actually."

"Used to be? What's it called now?"

"Oh…um…well…"

"That good?"

"Corpse Lake."

"My god!"

"It's not that bad! I mean…it's just that for a while it used to smell like…corpses. I think! It was a long time ago—it might just be a story. My dad said it was named that because it's shaped like… I don't know…a skeleton? Danny Delaney in third grade said it's because it used to be an old Indian cemetery before it filled up with water…somehow. Who knows anymore?"

Charles shook his head with disgust.

"You people have too many names for things. And too many creepy stories. No wonder you think everything's haunted!"

"Oh, shut up. Come on, we've got to climb this fence. Keep low—Wilford Townsend owns this farm, and he's a fucking psychopath."

"What?" Charles laughed, pushing the duffel bag through the gaps in the split rail fence and climbing over after Erik (a bit more dexterously than Erik had expected from him, honestly).

"I'm serious. I heard one of his ancestors beat a kid to death for stealing a fucking horse. The current progenitors aren't far off that mark."

"And you know this from personal experience?" Charles huffed, struggling to keep low to ground as they maneuvered around cow pies.

"Hell no—I never came this far east. My friend Mark came up in high school for some good old fashioned cow tipping, though, and nearly got a gut full of buckshot."

"Ah the rich lives of hillbillies—you should write a screenplay."

"Sorry we can't all live in that den of Utopian civilization, _New York City_."

"I don't live in New York City!" Charles mumbled petulantly. "Most of the time... Well at least half the time I live in boring, bucolic North Salem, and although I didn't live there as a teenager and can't testify to its more juvenile recreations, I can say that none of my neighbors have ever threatened me with buckshot for trespassing, nor have I been informed of any rampant cow-harassment."

"Where's North Salem?" Erik questioned, sitting up a little too high in his interest. He crossed his fingers under the blanket he was carrying, hoping against hope that it wasn't as English a town as it sounded. How was he supposed to date a man currently living an ocean away?"

"Oh, a bit north of New York City, admittedly. Just a train line away. But st—what are you smiling about?"

"I'm not smiling!"

"Yes you are—you're absolutely beaming. What's so funny?"

"Nothing," Erik growled, ducking under the last fence peg, stepping into the overgrown underbrush of the lake's brushy forest. "I was just thinking—that's not too far. I mean…I don't know, I was worried you lived in—England or something."

"Why would you worry about that?"

 _Tell him,_ he thought, intensely, but when he turned to do so, Charles was already reshouldering his bag and asking, suspiciously, "This is a real place we're going to, right? 'Corpse Lake' isn't just the code name you use for where you hide the bodies, is it?"

"Drat," Erik sighed. "You caught me. Now I _have_ you kill you."

Charles just grinned at him, walking backwards down the lake trail with his usual sultry step. "You can't kill me—I'm too good a lay. That's why I always sleep with people straight away, in case they need any convincing of why to keep me around."

"It might be working—I honestly am thinking of keeping you around."


	29. Chapter 29

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was in a rush, so sorry if this isn't edited very well!!

 Although Erik was right, and his secluded spot was vastly less populated than the body crush they could see at the north end of the lake (complete as it was with its wooden boat dock, picnic tables, and barbeque pits), this quiet alcove wasn’t completely uninhabited either.

Clearing the brush, Erik recognized Alex Summers, a juvenile delinquent who had once set the high school gymnasium alight. Although no one looked of age, Erik noticed a cooler of beer sitting in the shade near their towels and realized how badly he wanted a drink. He also recognized Alex's younger brother there, off on his own with his girlfriend, a smart teen about whom Erik had had to write an article when she won a scholarship to a girl’s summer science camp in New York.

He ignored the whooping group of older teens as they splashed and screamed and jumped from the wharf into the sun-warmed lake, instead setting up camp with Charles under the big ash tree in the grass. He was burning up after their trek out here and so put them securely in the shade. Charles didn’t seem to mind, or even notice, watching the kids swimming, or, rather, treading water as they stared outright at them, gone silent suddenly.  

“Do you know them?” Charles asked with an anxious chuckle. It was a bit unsettling, being stared at like this. But it was nothing compared to the house. 

“Unfortunately,” he huffed, kicking off his shoes and collapsing into the cool of the shade. He wasn’t worried about them—underage kids with booze weren’t known for their gregariousness. In all likelihood now that the party had been broken up, they’d leave; no doubt heading farther up the lake or finding an even more secluded drinking spot.

Or not.

“Hey Lensherr!” one of the punks shouted from the lake, breaking his reveries. He suspected it was Summers. That kid had a big mouth that didn’t know when to stop. The girls he was with giggled, goading him on. “That the ghost hunter, Lensherr? C’mon, bring him on down here! We don’t bite!”

“I think the locals would like to make my acquaintance,” Charles joked, pushing his hair, sweaty with the trek, back over his skull. Erik wasn’t in a joking mood. Not after the day he’d had.

“Fuck off, Summers!” Erik called back. Why couldn’t people just leave him be today?

“We should at least say hello,” the Brit suggested. Erik saw why in an instant as the man grabbed his recorder out of the deflated duffel bag.

“What’d you bring that for?” he balked.

“To interview you,” Charles said flippantly. “You said you wouldn’t talk about it in the house—we’re not in the house. Honestly, you didn’t expect Darwin to let me skive off completely, did you?”

“I did, actually,” he bit back sharply. God, to think he had imagined that Charles was bringing him out here to make him feel better, to be alone with him, maybe even to seduce him a little bit more--and instead it was all part of the job. He could just imagine the team drawing straws to decide who had to take a time out to give him a calming down, lulling him into reprieve before pinning him down and getting him on record. But for fuck's sake--after everything he'd been through they couldn't give him a fucking reprieve? What more did they want from him? And what did Charles want from him at all? Evidence? A fuck? Or was there any hope of something more?

He scoffed out loud with the frustration of it and Charles moved to appeasingly stroke his hair, but he ducked away from it, rolling into a stand. He didn’t want to be appeased; he wanted to be informed, not left out of every decision-making process like a child.

“Come on, ghost-hunter,” he sneered. “Let’s go meet your adoring fans.”

Erik squinted a curt hello to Scott and Jean talking quietly on their towels as Jean struggled to tan her pale skin. Much as the other teens irked him, he had a soft spot for Jean and, by association, Scott. The littlest Summers didn’t seem as hell-bent on destruction as his brother sometimes was, although he was just as mouthy. And Erik had to admit that Alex seemed much improved since juvie. Much less prone to setting forest fires, at least.

Alex was drying off on the wharf when they walked down the jutting stone pier; his friends, another boy and three girls, clung to the impediment from the water. Erik didn’t appreciate all those sets of eyes staring up at him and Charles from foot-level. It was creepy and reminded him too much of the burnt creature in the cupboard.

“Ain’t you jus’ a pretty thing,” one of the girls giggled up to Charles, reaching and tugging wetly on his pants leg.

“Back right off, Janine--you want this high-society fella to think Avalon’s full of skanks like you?” Alex growled, moving as if to splash her with his beer. She pouted and pushed off back into the depth of the lake, treading water with angry flashes of limbs.

“I’m Charles Xavier,” the Brit cheered as if nothing had happened, motioning hello to the teens. “Pleasure to meet all of you.”

“Alex Summers,” the young man replied, reaching forward to shake his hand. “I’ve gotta say, Mr. Xavier--it’s a real privilege havin’ you out here. Really respect your work and all.”

Erik stared between the two in shock. He’d never seen Alex really respect anything in his whole life. He hadn’t been completely aware that the boy was capable of the emotion.

“Ah, you’ve seen the show?” Charles asked, clearly flattered.

“Off and on. But I think I’ve read about every article you’ve ever written.”

“I didn’t know you wrote,” Erik growled. It was one more thing Charles hadn’t seen fit to tell him, it seemed.

“Just science essays,” Charles said with some surprise. “They’re not even published--you can only find them online. You must have a keen interest, Mr. Summers, to have gone through the trouble of finding them.”

“Oh he’s keen on it a’right,” a snarking voice intoned from behind them. Scott, Alex's little brother, and Jean, the girlfriend, had apparently seen fit to join the circus act. “Never shuts up about it. Mama’s fit to throttle him he ran on about _you_ so long. ‘Misser Xavier says--’ ‘When Misser Xavier gets here--’ ‘When I meet Misser Xavier--’. He’s been hanging out around the motel so long the police thought he was trynna find a hooker in the middle of the day time.”

“You shut your fat face, Pinkeye!”

“I ain’t had pink eye for years and years, you pyro!”

“Well what a great talk,” Erik disdained, headache quickly forming. “I think I’ll go back to the shade now if it’s all the same to you.”

He didn’t wait for a reply, just muscled past the lot of them and stalked back on bare feet to the blanket. He was surprised when Charles, towing Alex and the younger ones behind him, followed along. After all, if this little trek was all about work then they didn’t have to be together for it at all.

“Where you guys goin?” Alex’s friends in the lake wailed. But everyone ignored them and they went back to drinking and swimming without further protest.

“How come you’re not with your team up at the Gone-Away House, Mr. Xavier?” Alex questioned excitedly as he sat down in the grass before Charles. Scott looked fit to roll his eyes and stalk away but Jean was so obviously intrigued that he ended up staying too.

“Is it a dud?” she asked curiously.

“On the contrary,” Charles said, shaking his head. “It’s incredibly active.”

“So how come you’re not there, then? Aren’t you like, in charge of the place?” Scott wondered aloud, seemingly unsure if he wanted to be snotty or not.

“It was important that I be here,” Charles said, brushing Erik’s sleeve with his arm as he did so. Erik shifted away vengefully. It was important that Charles run him away far enough to study him, maybe. It was important that Charles get his little interview and if that meant going to the lake then the man would take one for the team and do it. “And my team is more than capable without me there--I don’t need to babysit them.”

“What have you found? Energy pulses? Temperature fluctuations? Complex electro-magnetic fields?” Alex questioned in a rush, leaning into Charles’ space with the gravitational pull of his interest.

“All of it,” Charles nodded back, just as excitedly. “And not only that but corporeal projections, even physical manipulation!”

“Woohoo,” snarked Scott and Jean elbowed him in the side, at which point he apparently decided to take things more seriously.

“Does that mean the Discovery Channel is really going to come here to do a show on it?” he asked with enough energy to atone for his flippancy.

“Well, I’m not in charge of that, but if it were up to me we’d do a whole season on it! It’s one of the most interesting cases I’ve ever worked on I’m sure...”

The kids all exchanged a thrilled glance at this.

“How much longer are you here for, Mr. Xavier?” Alex asked, as if he fully planned on working himself into every spare hour the brunet had available.

Charles stiffened slightly beside him on the blanket and coughed. “Well...we’re only scheduled through to tomorrow...so...” he mumbled.

If he said anything else Erik couldn’t hear it past the sudden ringing in his ears, nothing but _tomorrow, tomorrow_. He watched in shock as his vision whited out at the edges, waited for his pulse and his breathing to start back up again and when they did he stood mechanically, stumbling out to the pier.

He was too numb to be angry. His emotions felt cut off and confused. He had no sense of time. He only realized his hearing had come back to him when Jean sat down next to him, slipping her bare legs into the water beside his. He didn’t remember doing it, but his legs were definitely soaking there too, his trousers sodden up to the knee.

“You do that to his neck?” she asked, swinging her legs softly through the water. He stared at the sunlight on the lake and struggled to ungrip his hands from where they were clutching one another painfully in his lap.

“What?” he croaked.

“You like him, huh?” she sighed almost sadly.

“What the hell are you even doing here?” he groaned, pulling his hair. Why was his life so suddenly shit? His life had been so good this morning, before his brain could remember anything but Charles’ tight clench of a body around him. Why couldn’t he have stayed there forever? Why did he ever have to progress past that swift thrill of orgasm and afterglow? Maybe he could convince Charles to date him (assuming he wasn’t already dating someone else, and also that he was prone to dating, which wasn’t clear) but could he manage it in 24-hours? He didn’t give it much hope. He’d never tried to convince someone to date him before. He needed time to figure out how it went, certainly more time than 24 hours.

“I hang around boys all the time: I’m used to fixing their stupidity,” the girl shrugged, reaching forward and scooping water up across her pale knees. At fourteen she still looked twelve and he didn’t appreciate having his so-called stupidity fixed by a practically-twelve-year-old.

“I’ve got no stupidity for you to fix, so go away.”

“You like him, he likes you. He wants to spend time with you, you want to spend time with him. He’s only here until tomorrow, so your options are to take advantage of it while you can, or sulk the time away. Which sounds like a better plan to you?”

He glared at her and she grinned back. Yet another part of him couldn't help but be reminded of Azazel's advice to the brunet just that morning.

“Excuse me, but what _the hell_ do you know about any of this? You only just met the man a few _minutes_ ago.” _He_ wasn’t even sure that Charles wanted to spend time with him--how could she manage it?

“With the way he looks at you, a few minutes was all it took,” she shrugged, beaming.

After his brain fact-checked that yes, he had in fact heard her correctly, he was too shocked to stop himself from grinning back wanely, blinking his way into perfect understanding.

Then he pressed a palm into the bare skin of the girl’s back and shoved her right off the pier.

“ _You dick!_ ” she screamed as she spluttered to the surface of the water.

“You’re wearing a swimsuit,” he hummed back uncaringly, walking back up to the blanket. He wasn’t quite fast enough and she caught up long enough to wring her hair at him, splattering him with uncomfortable wetness and then running away again before he could get back at her.                      

When he sat down Charles shifted closer and pressed a hand that Scott and Alex didn’t notice into the small of his back while otherwise appearing to listen attentively to the boys’ babble. Erik didn’t relax but he didn’t pull away either.

The H4 was out and running and so Erik didn’t say anything, just listened in as well. He couldn’t help but speak though when he figured out what the boys were talking about.

“I thought you didn’t want Gone-Away House history because it would bias you?” he reminded indignantly.

“Yes but now that the team is here they can remain the unbiased ones and I can do whatever I want,” Charles shrugged.

“Don’t interrupt,” Alex demanded crossly.

“Yeah,” Scott agreed. “We were just getting to the good part! So then, Schmidt dug a secret tunnel to the ocean--”

“The ocean’s a hundred miles from here,” Erik scoffed.

“Anyway he didn’t even dig it to the ocean you idiot,” Alex corrected, hitting his brother in the arm. “He dug it to the lake and that’s why it’s called Corpse Lake—it’s where he hid all the corpses.”                                                                           

“What corpses? He was a fucking immigrant farmer! You idiots are mouthing off old wives’ tales that don’t make any sense to begin with!”

“Mr. Xavier didn’t ask us what’s old wives’ tales, he just asked what we know about the Gone-Away House and this is what we know!” Alex bit back angrily.

“And he needed the tunnel to hide all his Nazi friends and stuff,” Scott assured.

“Just because he has a German name, he’s a Nazi? He built the house in the 1880s! There weren’t even any Nazis yet!” Erik pointed out.

“Maybe I’ll just finish their interview first and then you can correct any mistakes you feel they’ve made?” Charles suggested, rubbing warm circles into his spine. Erik huffed but allowed it, listening intently to Alex and Scott’s slapdash report so he could try to remember all the myriad things that needed to be corrected.

A man named Klaus Schmidt had built the first house on the Gone-Away land back in the 1880s, and a lot of people blamed him for whatever had first kickstarted the “hauntings” although it was unclear if there had been anything ghostly from the start; certainly nothing like what Alex and Sean were saying. Mostly, Erik just recognized the same old stories that had always circulated, he felt incorrectly, since when he was in school. There were no records that Schmidt roasted humans on a spit to cannibalize them. Nor that he conducted seances with the Devil in the basement. He didn’t start the Ku Klux Klan. He probably wasn’t stabbed to death in the head by the bayonet of a boy whose family he’d sold to Satan. Everything that happened with him and the house was so ancient and obfuscated that anything surviving today was more fiction than fact. The records building burnt down in 1886 (and again in 1890, and again in 1921) so there wasn’t any surviving data on the land that wasn’t kept buried in someone’s backyard for a century. The only way they knew anything about the house at all was by one property deed and hearsay and the hearsay they got was amped up with every retelling, even in recent history.

“And by time the police arrived to carry out all the dead bodies the whole house was spewing smoke, but not from fire--Schmidt had opened up the gates of H-E-doublehockeysticks,” Scott insisted and Erik was pushed beyond his limits.

“Schmidt was a foreigner who decided to build a house in the middle of nowhere and it weirded people out! He probably never went to church and so they said he was in league with the devil! That house has been around for hundreds of years, plenty of time for people to exaggerate every story about it. It is legitimately an awful house, but that doesn't give you or any other fucking idiot an excuse to just make up whatever bullshit you want. There's a _real_ story here--does no one care about the fucking  _facts_?"

Charles slammed off the recorder and beamed in order to distract the boys from jumping him for his blasphemies.

“You boys have been such a help!” Charles gushed. “I don’t know if you’d want to, but please feel free to come by the house and visit us. The photography crew is coming by at 3, and we’d love to have you, too, of course. The more the merrier.”

“Mama would thrash us both,” Scott pointed out with a gulp.

“I’ll be there, Mr. Xavier!” Alex beamed. “I wouldn’t miss it for the world!”

“Don’t put us in the paper, though, Mr. Xavier,” Scott begged. “Mama really would thrash us.”

“My daddy won’t thrash me,” Jean said. “I’ll be there.”


	30. Chapter 30

“Alright, Mighty Mouth,” Charles teased once the kids left to shower and dress for their big newspaper gig, Alex with the sole car forcing all his swimming friends out of the lake unless they wanted to walk home. “You’ve got so much to say, let’s hear _your_ history of Ash Creek House.”

He’d maybe decided not to punish Charles for his secrecy, but that didn’t mean he’d forgiven him, certainly not enough for teasing.

“You should have told me,” he informed stonily.

Charles at least had the decency to blush and look away, although he persisted in arguing. “It says it on the schedule.”

“We both know I hardly glanced at that damned thing!”

“I’m sorry...” Charles coughed uncomfortably. “About that and...well...”

Glaring still, Erik reached and pressed record on the machine.

“A man named Klaus Schmidt bought the land in the 1870s or 80s and built a house on it. He was a farmer or something, I guess—most people around here were back then. When he died in 1884 it was given to the city. There’s not a lot of paperwork beyond that. A family from New York, the Crenshaws, bought it in the 40s. The historical society will have more about the facts, I just remember the trumped-up Halloween stories.”

“You mean there’s an area of history you don’t know inside and out?” Charles balked jokingly, glancing at him to see if teasing was back on the table yet. Erik smiled mischievously back at him and put his hand up the back of Charles’ T-shirt, caressing his knuckles over his spine and his soft warm skin. He didn’t bother worrying about the act: Charles was only here for another twenty-four hours and had been a dick to him. If the man didn’t like it, it was punishment and if the man did like it...damn, he hoped the man liked it, wanted more of it, wanted more of _him_.

Charles shivered slightly under his touch but turned away, distracting himself with texting, before he could analyze his expression. Shrugging it off, Erik continued.

“According to lore, in the 40s the Crenshaw’s took it as a summer home, for the rustic charm, and their son was in the crazy house before the year was out. Complete mental breakdown. I guess that’s when interest in the place as a ghost house started up, although to hear other people tell it the place was a devilish cesspit since the first nail was hammered.”

“And after the Crenshaws?”

“Well, the Lovegoods moved in when I was a kid. I just remember my mom when they first moved in forbidding my dad from going over there. They’d wanted him to redo the locks or something I guess, or maybe this was a pre-emptive forbidding, I’m not sure. There were the parents and their daughter Lana, and then a year or so afterwards they had a baby. The dad seemed really into the history of the house, was into that ghost stuff. I’m not sure about the mom. The girl was apparently always a little loony. Anyway, when the baby was a few months old, it died. SIDS, probably, but it was obviously hard on the family and the town didn’t make it any easier on them. Moving into a ghost house, you know, what do you expect—they blamed them for the baby’s death. After that it was just too hard to keep living here. I think the parents divorced. Or maybe the mom killed herself, I don’t remember. My mom didn’t like talk about the house and it’s hard to give much credence to schoolyard rumors, especially at that age. Who knows what really happened there?”

“And what about you?” Charles asked softly, eyes pale and intense on him. “Erik, what did _you_ see in there?”

Erik found that he wasn’t shocked by the line of questioning. Really, it was a surprise he’d been able to put Charles off for this long. He’d run out of excuses not to talk about it, so he simply gripped his wrists tightly, glared into the lake, and muscled through it.

“There was a…a…man, I think. Under the sink. In the bathroom. He was…he was all burnt up. Like…charcoal. He tried—he tried t—” Erik couldn’t manage past there, bit his tongue, shifted anxiously on the blanket. God, his fucking chest hurt. He focused on the pain of it to distract him, the curious pressure of it, like something swelling against the inside of his breastbone, groping for a way out.

Charles pushed the H4 in front of them, scooting up against his hip and rubbing his back, pressing his cheek against Erik’s bicep. Like a teenager showing off, Erik felt the urge to flex, but manage to stop himself before he embarrassed himself needlessly.

“When you said you smelt smoke, you weren’t being coy, were you?” Charles asked. Erik shook his head, looking up when Charles nudged him. Right, the recorder.

“No.”

“What about today? In the stairwell?”

“It was…” Erik tried, scrounging for the right word. “The man in the basement. The…the man...I don’t know.”

“A different man? Than the cupboard?"

"Yes."

"The same one that grabbed your necklace?”

“Yes.” The necklace he still hadn’t found. “He…he came up the stairs, and when I turned to try to get out he…he touched me—he burnt me, like he burnt them.”

“Burnt who?”

Burnt who? Erik had no clue…so why did his mouth open and say, “The people under the floors.”

Hand trembling, Erik reached out and turned the H4 off, breathing a sigh of relief when Charles didn’t turn it back on, reaching up and stroking his hair instead.

“It can’t be real, can it?” he asked, voice uneven. “Obviously I’m schizophrenic and have just…somehow…not noticed until now, right?”

Charles chuckled, leaned into him comfortingly.

“Sorry, dear—I don’t think so.”

“How do you know?” Erik growled like a peevish child. “You only met me yesterday. I could be a hotbed of mental inquietude.”

“Oh, I’ve no doubt you are,” Charles laughed, and reached up to massage his shoulder, thumb digging directly into the tense knot of muscle lined up beside his spine, effectively putting an end to their argument. Erik groaned low, head dropping forward of its own accord, muscles temporarily paralyzed by pleasure.  

“You like that?”

Erik nodded heavily, closing his eyes, not fighting when Charles pushed him over onto his stomach on the blanket. Certainly not complaining when the man threw a leg over his hips and started massaging his back seriously.

“Oh god,” Erik moaned, in heaven. “Has anyone every told you you’re great with your hands?”

“Well, yes, but not usually while my hands are on their _back_ ,” Charles chuckled.

“I like your hands anywhere on me,” Erik assured, reaching up to stroke Charles thigh.

“Your hands aren’t so bad, either,” said Charles, leaning forward to nuzzle into Erik’s hair, rucking his shirt out of its tuck and sticking his hands underneath, rubbing his bare skin. Charles' hips hitched against him pleasantly, and obviously on purpose as the brunet added, “Although I must admit, I can’t find much wrong with _any_ of your accoutrements.”

Erik was soft butter at that point, and increasingly melted the more Charles dug into his sore, stressed muscles.

“If ghost-hunting doesn’t work out,” he mumbled, effects of ebbed adrenaline and mounting pleasure putting him to sleep. “You should definitely be a masseur.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Charles laughed, fighting to reach up to his shoulders with his shirts in the way, sighing finally in frustration. “Take these off, will you?”

Erik complied happily, pulling his dress shirt and undershirt up over his head and yanking his arms free as Charles pulled the duffel bag over to him and put his H4 out of harm’s way.

“We should invest in some massage lotion,” Erik suggested eagerly, folding his arms under his head and settling in for a prolonged nap, or at the very least a doze.

“I don’t know,” Charles laughed, leaning down and kissing his spine—at the nape of his neck, the furrow between his shoulders, ambling towards the small of his back. “Now that I’ve got you en dishabille I’m suddenly thinking of better things to put my hands to.”

“Get back to work,” Erik smiled, flexing and bumping Charles’ mouth off him. This place wasn’t quite secluded enough for that...

“Okay, okay,” the man said, fumbling at something, but before Erik could turn to see what it was, Charles sat up on his hips and there was the unmistakable mechanical clicking of a camera.

Eyes snapping open, Erik knew immediately, inconsolably, that he’d been played.

In one sharp, angry movement, he twisted and shoved the man off him, tumbling Charles and his giant infrared camera into the grass on his back with a yelp.

“Erik I had to!” the man squawked, eyes sharp and unapologetic, legs splayed, struggling up to his elbows. Erik clambered atop him, straddling his hips and yanking the camera away.

“Erik, no!” But Erik just set a hand against Charles’ breastbone and shoved him back to the ground, not missing the way the man’s eyes fluttered, the way his hips canted up underneath him. Grinning vengefully, he tossed the camera away and dropped down atop the man, kissing him angrily.

“You tricky bastard—honesty’s just not your forte is it?”

“Well,” Charles smiled, writhing under him unmercifully. “My strengths lie in different arenas, that’s true.”

Oh well, privacy was overrated.

 

* * *

“Was there ever a fire at the Ash Creek House?” Charles mumbled sleepily, still twirling Erik’s hair around his fingertips. Erik blinked his eyes open, close-up with the mottled bruises on Charles’ throat, the slow thrumming of his pulse underneath.

“Huh?” he grunted.

“I mean,” Charles yawned, stretching his spine within Erik’s loose grip. “It’d make sense. With the smoke, the burnt man…”

“No,” Erik murmured, shaking his head, tightening his arm around Charles’ bare waist, mind a smoldering fire slowly licking back into flame. “It’s actually the oldest wooden building in the county. The original foundations, I mean. That’s why it’s a historical site.”

“Hmm,” Charles rumbled, his chest jerking under Erik minutely with it. Erik wondered if it was his turn for a question now, and what question he would ask. _Do you really think it’s a poltergeist? Do you really think I’m doing this, without meaning to, without knowing it—is all this torment coming from me?_ No, he didn’t want to know, he didn’t want to open that can of worms. _What happened to you at Oxford? Why were you so sad and why does that sadness, that anxiety, still flicker out of you sometimes, in between the cracks of whatever you've laid over it?_ He didn’t think Charles would appreciate that line of questioning any more than Erik appreciated the first.

Much better to lie here, in the sun, in the quiet, in a place with no questions. Neither one of them could escape either subject forever, but for now it was possible, and Erik clung to that possibility while it lasted, even though he felt it growing slimmer and slicker in his grip.

Goaded into waking despite his better judgment, Erik stretched out long, arms reaching out past his fingertips with a wide yawn.

“You stretch like a cat,” Charles pointed out with a chuckle, scratching at his skull like a favored pet.

Erik did his best rendition of purring and rubbed his face against Charles’ bare chest, smiling up at him. Grinning back, eyes just this side of open, Charles’ stroked his face lazily, brushing over the hard lines of its contours. Erik liked his touch, the unconsciousness of it, the purposelessness, as if Charles wanted to touch him only for touch, with no plan to further, no scheme.

“It’s getting late,” the man realized. “We should be heading back.”

“No, we shouldn’t,” said Erik, chin digging into Charles’ breastbone. “We should just lie in the grass forever, alternating between making love and eating muffins.”

Charles’ body shook underneath him deliciously as he laughed, teeth white and glinting against his wine-red lips.

“I don’t think Darwin would appreciate that.”

“Oh, Darwin can go fuck himself. He’s a fucking pric—” Erik’s invectives were muffled under Charles’ warm palm. Playfully, Erik bit it, and then pushed it the rest of the way away, sliding up Charles’ body and kissing him insistently, but gently, slowly.

Charles met him with more than insistence, with animal passion, as if to stand in for the sex lack of condoms made difficult at the moment. Holding the man securely by the hair, tightening his grip authoritatively, he insisted on setting his own pace—slow, languorous, decidedly sweet.

With a jerk, Charles pushed him away, staring up at him in shock.

“What are you doing?”

“Well, you see,” he chuckled, stroking Charles’ dark hair. “When two humans like each other, they sometimes put their mouths tog—“

“Shut up,” said Charles, and he put his hand over Erik’s mouth when he tried to kiss him again, turning his face away. “No! No more kissing. If I come once more today I might die from it.”

“What, do they only have abstinence-education in Britain?” Erik teased, peeling his hand down from his lips. “People can kiss without coming, you know.” Stroking the man’s face, he added, helplessly. “I like just kissing you.”

Charles just looked up at him, quiet in that way he had, like he’d shuttered something away, closed a part of himself off.

“We’re late,” Charles said, and he was wiggling out from under him and drawing quickly up to his feet, grabbing his shirt from where they’d tossed it.

“What is it?” Erik balked, grabbing Charles’ wrist when the man handed him his own shirts.

“Nothing,” Charles chuckled thinly, struggling to pull away, but Erik just tugged him closer.

“I’m serious, Charles,” he demanded.

“So am I,” Charles laughed, grabbing his chin and shaking it slightly. “I know it’s not your favorite place, but honestly--quit stalling!”

The man pulled free then, gently but insistently, and Erik didn’t see what else he could do—he got up and put his shirts back on, brushing off his slacks.

“Am I decent?” Charles questioned, looking over his own jeans.

“Never,” Erik assured with a forgiving smile.

They were slipping forward into the place where all questions were present and inescapable. Erik didn’t begrudge Charles holding onto his secrecy any more than he begrudged himself for holding onto his. Everything had to be faced sooner or later—Erik would have to face whatever Charles was calling out of him with this house, and Charles would have to answer the same. Neither one of them could run forever, no matter how they wished to. But for now, silence was possible, and so they packed up and took to the trail in silence, Erik’s arm around Charles’ waist, Charles’ fingertips tracing patterns through his shirt.


	31. Chapter 31

A/N: I'M SORRY. If you had told me three weeks ago this would take me three weeks to post I would have been moderately confused since this was mostly written by three weeks ago. But then I got as far of this page and realized what I had written would not do at all. So I went back and rewrote it. Then I realized that would not do. Then I wrote this, and decided I simply did not have the stamina to write it one more time, and so I posted it here, ashamed and embarrassed. So, I'M SORRY.

* * *

It was a lot easier to forget what the fuck he was doing, with Charles’ arm around his waist, with the main bobbing against him at every disjointed step. When Charles pulled away in order to not be hipchecked into the creek on the narrow trail back to the house, it all seemed to come back to him. Charles as well, it seemed, because in the same instant the man cleared the trees he backtracked directly into Erik’s chest, nearly offsetting them both into the gurgling water.

“Let’s not go back,” Charles gasped, voice so low Erik was sure it was his own wishful thinking, regardless of the demonstrative grip the man took of him.

“What?”

Charles just closed his eyes, as if against a pain, and Erik realized he was steeling himself exactly one moment before Charles pulled away again, forced himself forward.

“Nothing,” the man said. “I’m being idiotic. Those who dance must pay the piper.”

Erik wasn’t sure what dancing had to do with their predicament, or what he’d done that was so awful that the payment was going back to that shit house without the brunet wrapped around him, but he didn’t get the chance to ask as they exited the clearing and were met with what was apparently the parking lot for a Motley Crue concert.

The Gone-Away House had never been so jam-packed before. The whole demeanor of the house was to keep people away, not bring them rioting forward. It was like seeing some crotchety scrooge being fawned over by an adorable preschool class. It just seemed wrong. Indecent.

Cars were doubled up in the driveway from the ghost-van back past Erik’s car to the bridge—he recognized Jessica, the photographer’s, car up front; there was Alex’s muddy truck and some soccer-mom van in the back, as well as a small green Jaguar, immaculate. Any confusion dissipated straight away as Raven stood up from her sprawl on the swing bench. Her hands went immediately to her hips, and even from this distance Erik got the distinct impression she was sending a motherly glare their way. Charles cringed beside him. He thought he got the piper reference now.

“What’s her fucking problem?” he growled.

He wasn’t expecting Charles to answer, he hadn’t thought it was a question that really had an answer, so he couldn’t hide his surprise when Charles said, “She’s punishing me.”

“What? Why?” he balked, stumbling.

But Charles caught himself—smiled dismissively, and took the house as a welcome distraction as the front door opened and the place spewed its contents onto the porch. Person after person streamed out, like marbles from a jar, and the first and most thrilled was Alex, of course.

“How old is he?” Charles suddenly asked, from the corner of his smile, waving back to his growing audience. Erik recognized Jean and Scott, of course, among the increasing numbers, as well as most of the team, but there were also unexpected guests: Erik knew the one girl, the ethnic looking one hanging close to Jean, because she was Haroum’s daughter, or maybe niece, he couldn’t exactly remember other than that he’d seen her picture on his desk. There was an even younger girl with her, maybe 6 or 7 who Erik recognized but couldn’t place. He couldn’t try too hard; he was busy responding to Charles.

“Too young for you,” he growled. “So get it out of your head.”

Laughing, Charles leaned against him for a moment as they walked, brushing his hand expertly over Erik’s ass as he did so.

“That’s _not_ what I meant,” he said with a reassuring squeeze, and Erik officially felt pretty good about the outlook of the rest of his day.

Right up until he saw Emma, exiting the House and scowling at him from over Darwin’s shoulder.

Fucking _shit_.

 

* * *

“I told you to get this damned story,” Emma hissed at him, tall enough in her six inch stilettos to properly bear down on him. He tried hard not to wince under her tirade, and normally he’d be able to manage it no problem, but he’d been through so much lately. He shifted uncomfortably and threw a desperate gaze to Charles on the porch, but he was getting talked to just as fervently from Raven. At least he had Alex and the rest of his team to deflect her, fight her for his attention. Erik was on his own. “I told you keep it in your pants until your work was done. You’d get yours after I got mine—ring any bells? So why in the hell do I arrive here and find you off on a _fucking picnic_ with your lady lover?”

“I—I was interviewing him!” he claimed, although he should have known better than to get trapped in such an obvious lie.

“Without your recorder?” Emma sneered, motioning with a viciously manicured hand to his car, where of course the contents of his bag were strewn out for anyone to see.

“On…on paper,” he insisted, although this was even easier to suss out.

“Let me see.”

Growling to himself, clenching his fists, he came clean.

“Listen,” he hissed. “What’s the big deal? I’ve got _more_ than enough for an article—for a fucking slew of articles! So who cares if I shiv off for a minute? I’ve fucking earned it! You’ve no idea how I’ve earned it!”

“Oh please, save me the dirty details. As far as _I’m_ concerned, you have not earned _shit_ until I have a masterpiece on my desk ready for print,” Emma snarled back at him, finger snapping into his chest and making him jump back a surprised step. This subject was absolutely unhinging her. She’d never got this riled up over the bank foreclosure article, or when someone sold pot brownies at the church bake sale. “Your romp today? That’s off the clock. I’m not paying for your afternoon delight. As soon as the team packs up you are getting your ass to the office and you are not leaving until I am happy—no, overfuckingjoyed--with what you’ve given me. Do you understand?”

Erik did understand, which was why his stomach tightened so uncomfortably.

“But Charles leaves tomorrow!”

“Good!” Emma harped at him. “Maybe then your blood flow will resume delivery to your skull and your brain will start working again! If I’d thought you were even in the least bit capable of acting like such a love-struck teenager I never would have entrusted this task to you! Lesson damned well learned.”

Erik didn’t have time to balk about her image of him, he was so busy balking about everything else.

“Emma please,” he gasped, grabbing her arm and thus throwing her off-kilter enough to shut up for a second. “Please, I never get sick, I don’t take vacations, I’m a model employee. I’ll get you your article, I’ll give you an amazing article—but _don’t make me work tonight._ ”

“What on earth?” she gasped back, apparently unable to process this new side of him.

He threw a worried glance at the patio, but no other than Azazel was looking at him. The man continued to watch him, not bothering to avert blue eyes like shards of glass, scarcely able to be seen in the sunlight. He gulped, retreated, continued in a hiss.

“You don’t need the article today. Today, tomorrow, it’s all the same. But Charles leaves tomorrow and I _need_ today.”

“My god,” Emma gasped, blue eyes wide and shocked, sunglasses wobbling on top of her head. “You’re serious, aren’t you?”

“You don’t understand, Emma,” he whispered, sweeping his hand back through his hair. “And I can’t explain it. You know I consider you a friend as well as a boss—that’s how little my social circle extends. I’m asking you this one thing, as a friend. I’ll get you your article. I’ll get it if it means pulling an all-nighter. But please—give me this. Give me tonight.”

“For Christ’s sake, Erik,” she murmured, rubbing the bridge of her nose rather than her eyes so as not to smudge her shadow. “He’s really gotten to you, hasn’t he?”

Erik didn’t answer, because what was he supposed to say?

Silence seemed to be the best argument he could have made since after a minute of agonizing thought, Emma came around on her own.

“Fine,” she sighed. “Fine. It’s obvious I won’t get any work out of you today anyway. Tomorrow, after he leaves—maybe you’ll get your head back on your shoulders.”

He sighed heavily, and maybe seemed _too_ relieved, or else too happy, because she bit at him again.

“You better hope you do, or you’ll be right in the hospital next to Mrs. Hudson, whether you consider me a friend or not.”

He got as far as “What do you mean, Mrs. Hu—” when he was cut off by Jessica calling, “Hey, are we doing this or what?” Emma sighed, “Do you have the lights set up yet?” Without waiting for an answer she was already shoving Erik back towards the house, pulling her keys and, of all things, a phone charger out of her purse— _his_ phone charger, from work.

“Here, get your phone charging when you get in there. If you keep not answering your phone I’m going to start taking it personally. And we don’t want that.”

“Where are _you_ going?” he balked, struggling even as everyone else practically sprinted inside to get in on the photography. Charles, he saw with a sigh of relief, was holding out against the dual draws of Raven and Alex.

“Some of us have actual work to do. I can’t babysit you all day.”

But she wasn't looking at him as she said this, and, frankly, it didn't make any sense. There was no fucking world in which Emma didn't go in there and get a picture of herself with her prize ghost-hunter, if only so Moira MacTaggart had to see it on the front page. He twisted in her grip, not sure if he was trying to buy himself some time or was genuinely interested.

“What happened to you in there?”

Emma seemed shocked, but he recognized the first glimmer of dread in her eyes—the dread that someone had recognized that something _had_ happened in there.

“Don’t be stupid,” she growled, pushing him in earnest now. “Now get in there. I don’t have time for this.”

He realized he owed her too much to press the issue. And he also realized she didn't trust him enough to leave before witnessing him placed directly into Jessica's responsible hands. Until he went inside that hellish house. So it was all the more relieving when Charles called out suddenly, “Erik! I need to speak with you, about the article.”

Before he could fully believe his luck, Charles was at his elbow, pulling him away. “You don’t mind, do you, Miss Frost? I just need to go over his rough draft, make sure it’s all shaping up correctly.”

“Don’t keep him long,” Emma said, just managing to smile at him, though it looked forced. Erik couldn’t help but think she’d chew Charles out too if she weren’t relying on him so much for this article—it was mostly his fault, after all, that Erik had been getting exactly shit-all done lately. “He’s got a lot of work to catch up on.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Charles assured, and yanked Erik clean away, charger fluttering in his grip.

“Now what the hell do I do?” Charles hissed.

Erik glanced back—Emma was still frowning at them demonstratively.

“Around the corner of the house. She’ll lose interest if she can’t see us.”

Charles did as he was told, rushing to the safety of the corner and tripping through the bramble, pushing up against the dirty wooden siding like a sloppy secret agent.

“Is she still watching?” he hissed.

“I’m not going to check! What about Raven and Alex? Are they still waiting for you?”

“Alex got distracted over a discrepancy about the importance of microelectric currents with Hank, and Raven luckily loves getting her picture taken.”

“So I get you to myself a little longer,” Erik grinned, pulling Charles’ hips away from the wall enough to fit his arms around the man’s waist.

“Do they not have gay sex in this town?” the man huffed, shifting his hips in Erik’s grip with a cheeky grin. “You’re downright insatiable.”

“Just for you,” he said, and kissed the man on the tip of his nose, which he had never done in his entire life, and couldn’t quite believe he had just done. Charles couldn’t seem to believe it either, he just stared at Erik for a moment, as if he feared for his sanity, interspersed with a cross-eyed glance at his nose and a deepening frown.

“Um,” the man coughed. “Frost should be gone by now. And I’ve got to appear in at least one photo. You’re okay out here for a minute? Perfect.”

And in the next moment he was gone, allowing Erik to bash his head against the side of the house for a moment, listening to the front door clatter shut. He stopped when a voice, low and intoning, like the voice of God or Satan, said from above: “I think now’s a good time for a heart-to-heart.”


	32. Chapter 32

Erik watched as Azazel long-legged it over the brambles he himself had crushed down only yesterday, and regripped his charger in his hand anxiously, unsure what he was getting himself into here. Raven apparently wanted him out of Charles' life, Darwin most likely wanted something similar or even identical; what did Azazel want? Erik realized he could use the charger cord as a garrote if Azazel tried to kill him and throw his body in the creek and, reassured, followed the man through the undergrowth.

Before he could get the first lick in, though, Azazel turned to him, blue eyes eerily glacial in the sunlight, and said, "I like you."

_Fuck._

"Oh, um—that's great but…aren't you dating Raven?"

The man stopped in his tracks Erik blushed, wondering where he was supposed to look when someone crushing on you stared like this.

"But I see your intelligence is rather hit or miss," Azazel mused. "This explains a lot."

"Excuse me?" Erik bristled.

Azazel chuckled and shook his head as he moved away, coming out onto the weedy backyard and taking up a lazy, traipsing sort of promenade. Erik followed only grudgingly.

"You can't let Charles' antics get you down. You kind of came out of left field. It'll take him a while to get used to it."

"To what?"

"Oh—getting kissed on the nose, for one."

Erik blushed scarlet, and wondered if he shouldn't _pre-emptively_ strangle the man.

"Don't be embarrassed," Azazel laughed. "I thought it absolutely adorable. I'm sure Charles did too...or will, once he's analyzed it."

"Would you stop that?" Erik growled.

"What?" The man seemed genuinely confused, so that Erik huffed but did answer.

"Stop talking like you're his fucking therapist."

He was happy to see the pink tinge this brought to the man's face. He shouldn't be the only one so goddamned uncomfortable.

Taking a deep breath, Azazel said, seriously, "I'm sorry. It didn't mean…I only…Charles deserves a lot of happiness. I've known him for a long time, but this fact is probably obvious from the start." Erik had to agree: he'd known Charles all of a day and already knew how much he should be rewarded with constant happiness. He had every hope that dating the man would be some step towards accomplishing this, even though the man showed every sign of being difficult about it. "The trouble is…he guards himself, or…polices himself, sabotages himself…I don't want him to, and you're the first time I think he's slipped up, let his guard down. He underestimated you, thought you were less of a threat than you are, and it's got me excited is all. I'm jumping ahead of myself. If I seem meddlesome, or overeager, please, know that it's only because I care about him a great deal."

"And I supposed his sister's in the same boat," Erik scoffed. In his view there were too many people being meddlesome on Charles' behalf.

Azazel laughed, white teeth looking dangerous even in mirth.

"If Raven could lock you in a basement somewhere until Charles was safely out of the county I'm not sure she wouldn't! Raven has…different ideas about what Charles needs."

"Which is?"

"Well, _her_ , mainly. I don't think she wants your kind of competition in the proper care of Charles."

"Proper care? For fuck's sake, he's an adult! You guys realize that, don't you? He's not some pet Pomeranian we're talking about."

The man just nodded, almost dismissively, making Erik grind his teeth. He glanced at the house, wishing Charles were somehow eavesdropping and could hear the way his so-called friends talked about him, but he realized Azazel had led them safely away, along the brushline of the backyard.

"I'm only glad to see her one-on-one didn't scare you away. Of course that was just preliminary. I think she's underestimating you as well. She's not sure if you're as dangerous to her plans as she fears you are. And she likes you and doesn't want to destroy you if she doesn't have to. Eventually though she'll realize…."

"I don't understand this at all. I mean, I make him happy apparently. Why does she want him to be miserable?"

Azazel looked up from his musings, pale eyes blinking. "Oh, she doesn't want him to be miserable! No, no, she does want him to be happy…she just wants him to be happy with _her_. She tries very hard to make him happy. So you see, if you swoop down and make him happy in no time at all…well, that's very disheartening, isn't it?"

"This whole group is fucking psychopaths. No wonder they gave you a television show. How the hell does she expect to make him happy telling him what to do all the time, telling him what to eat and annoying the hell out of him?"

"Well," Azazel smiled sheepishly. "If you'd known their mother you'd know where she got her training. Has he…has he told you? About them? About his and Raven's relationship?"

Erik blanked out a moment, heart swollen in his chest. Holy God…he hadn't realized that of course Azazel was a treasure trove of information. Erik himself wasn't the only one who could get wrung out for secrets.

"He said…he just said that she was punishing him—that's why she kept trying to get him under her thumb."

"He said that?" Azazel asked, shocked, and Erik nodded. "Well…huh…Maybe she is, in her own way."

Erik was about to ask for clarification, but with a steadying breath, Azazel took on a tone that was unmistakably story-telling. With an eager but suppressed smiled Erik settled in for a tale, suppressing the urge to grab his notebook and start jotting down plot points.

"Charles was living in England, going to school, and Raven was in America with her mother and step-father. They did _not_ get on, and Raven asked, begged, really, for Charles to come home—sort of defend her, you know, take her side against them. But, well, Raven has very specific ideas of how she wants to be defended, and most of the time it's 'violently'. She didn't think he was being heavy-handed enough, was too diplomatic. Anyway, she ran away with this trashy high-school boyfriend. Just left Charles to his diplomacy and pissed off. This was a long time ago, you know, she was very young, just a teenager. I think Charles felt very abandoned by that, left in that house with a mother who didn't care about him, a step-father who'd never wanted him, and a step-brother who was outright cruel to him. After a while he sort of limped back to England with his tail between his legs, acted out in his own way, I guess, but it wasn't really dramatic enough to get anyone's attention. It was all very half-hearted, at least compared to Raven. I mean, he got a flamboyant boyfriend, but he got into Oxford. He took up smoking, drank a lot, but he never skipped class. You get the idea. Anyway, then his mom died."

Erik nodded, remembering Charles' flippant admission.

"That was a real hard time for him. It was pretty sudden, and he had no closure. His mother never acknowledged how hard he'd always worked to please her, and she'd never even had the decency to notice his mini rebellion. She'd died without him ever once getting through to her. And Raven…well she's never forgiven herself for it, but she more or less abandoned him to it. They kept in touch, even when she was living with her boyfriend in Canada, and he came to see her when he got the news. He wanted her to come home, for the funeral...And, well, she turned him down flat. Asked if their step-father was going to be there, and of course he was, it was his wife, and she said she wouldn't go if he went."

Erik twisted the charger around his fingers, leaving white-red welts. He'd thought Raven was interesting in her own right, away from Charles that was, but now his heart seethed with indignation on the brunet's behalf. Azazel seemed to pick up on this, or maybe his own disgust was riled by his girlfriend's actions, because he begged, "She was young, and dumb, she'd be the first to admit. She regrets it now, more than anything, not being there for Charles. Afterwards, when she came to her senses, she tried to make it up to him. She's _been_ trying to make it up to him, for years, but…I didn't know Charles then, so it's not like I have first-hand knowledge, but…I think he's changed since then. From what Raven says...and others... I think his mother's, and then Raven's antics…it was all too much. He just cut it all away. And no matter how much Raven tries to get back to the way they were before…she just can't. He can't. It's like he doesn't function that way anymore. She gets frustrated. She's easy to frustrate. She tries and tries, in her own clumsy way, and she gets nothing for it, and then she lashes out. I think that must be what he means when he says she's punishing him—for not forgiving her. Or, not not _forgiving_ her, he always says he's _forgiven_ her, but for not forgetting. I don't think he'll ever forget what she did, and that's why they're so fucked up."

Erik just stood, staring at the water of the creek, wondered vaguely when they'd gotten to the creek, and thought of the picture, the one from Oxford. That must have been after Raven had bailed on him. He felt the raw, jagged wound this betrayal had left on the man as surely as if it had been left on him, felt why it was so hard to let someone close. Not just Raven, but him, anyone, because it was _still_ so festered and painful.

"He told you all this?" he murmured. Azazel was standing just beside him, so that their shirt sleeves but not their skin overlapped.

"He tells me a little. The rest I get from Raven."

Everyone was a little—everyone got just a little from him and he spread it out, till people were his best friends on just a little, fell in love with him on just a little.

"Why do you say he underestimated me?" he asked, but as soon as he'd asked it he thought he knew the answer; Azazel just confirmed it.

"He's not celibate, he's not ugly. It's not hard for him to pick up men. But he picks them for how little they require, how little they want from him. One night and they're satisfied and he's safe. But you…I think you want more, or else you will want more. I don't think he expected that, and I don't think he's ready for the fight I have no doubt you'll put up." Erik jerked up, stared at him suspiciously, but Azazel just smiled. "What can I say? You don't seem like the type to go down easy."

Snorting, Erik shook his head and kicked a loose stone into the water, walked along the wall back towards the front yard. That was enough. That was more than enough.

"I don't think he'd be happy, you telling me all this."

"So long as none of it shows up in your newspaper, I don't care."

Erik eyed him, but the man seemed serious—yet how could he not care? Erik barely knew Charles but he knew enough to never want the man angry at him.

"I love him," Azazel claimed, plainly and without reserve. "I've known him too long not to. And when you love someone you help them, in whatever way you can, even if they don't understand, even if they don't approve. I have to think this insight has helped you, will help you to go easy on him, to give him some slack."

Erik stopped them on the side of the creek.

"You're not behaving any better than Raven," he pointed out grimly. "Neither one of you thinks he can function on his own, do you? You either think he can't entice me on his own merit, or else I'm not smart enough to be enticed by him on his own merit. He's emotionally handicapped and needs all the help he can get from you two, is that it? She knows what's best for him and is going to keep him handcuffed to her for life. You know what's best for him and are going to get him a snazzy new boyfriend. Who the hell do you people think you are?"

Azazel didn't quail under his tirade, but turned to him, pale, glacial eyes freezing him in place.

His voice was slow and methodical, like a serial killer. "And I suppose you're the paragon of laissez-faire. Charles can do what he wants, smash his opportunities for growth as he sees fit, keep himself cut off forever. You don't have a dog in this fight? Nothing he's being woefully obtuse about?"

Erik flushed to the roots of his hair, he could feel the heat of it encompassing him, and growled a stubborn " _No!"_ because it was not technically a lie. He hadn't actually asked Charles to date him yet, so he didn't know that the man would fight him on it. He could _guess,_ certainly, with the way Charles ran away from a kiss on the nose, shut off every time he got too close for comfort, but he didn't _know,_ so he didn't need to admit to it, at least to Azazel.

The other man just smiled and seemed willing to let him get away with it, turning back to the water complacently, but a frown soon won out, and Erik was worried Azazel had come up with another hard question, or else another hard divulgence, but instead the man said, "Do you hear that?"

And even though Erik did not, his blood still ran cold because, looking about, he realized they were standing right beside the rusted grate in the ground between the house and the stream.

"It sounds like someone's calling your name," Azazel pointed out, and before Erik could run away as quickly as possible, they were interrupted with someone shouting, "Oi!"

Tearing his gaze away from the rusting metal in the grass, it was a balm to his jangled nerves to see Charles standing on the patio, even though he was glaring at them, hands on his hips. Regardless, Erik broke out into a pleased smile. He'd come back. Alone, nonetheless! And that would have obviously required some maneuvering to spring free of his sister, based on what Azazel had been telling him. He started forward eagerly, giving the grate a wide berth.

"Good luck," Azazel said to him, and obviously meant it.

"What were you two talking about?" Charles questioned as soon as he was in range, throwing an anxious look back at Azazel who ambled leisurely towards the backyard. Maybe he could take the backdoor and distract Raven from coming after her wayward brother.

"Nothing much," Erik lied outright, and then, to ward off any further lines of questioning, he continued: "You guys all done taking pictures?"

" _I_ am," Charles sighed, obviously exhausted by such work. When Erik made to walk to his car to put away his now-sweaty charger Charles followed closely. "They're touring about the place now. Alex is eagerly examining the basement door."

Erik shrugged the chill off his spine and opened the back door, frowning again at the mess he'd made of the back seat. Best put that back together, especially since Charles was settling in to stay, leaning against the car, talking as if he were trying to buy time. "They're sweet kids, really. And so eager about paranormal research! They're just sponges for information, are so excited to learn. They're an absolute joy."

"Especially Alex?" Erik mocked with a teasing sneer. Charles grinned and glared at him.

"Actually I was going to say especially _Kitty_. Really, why do you insist on thinking I'd give up Magnus to run after a _boy_?"

Erik smiled and shook his head. Kitty, that was right, the little brunette girl. Still, although he could match her with the name, his brain didn't offer up anything else, like where he knew her from. Still, he _did_ know her, he was sure, from _somewhere_.

"I," Charles began, sounding breathless, sounding in pain, actually and Erik dropped his satchel mid-stuff to see Charles wringing his hands, not eager about his words but obviously insistent on getting them out. "I'm sorry. That I ran off like that. Earlier. I shouldn't have done that. I told you—I _promised_ you—that I wouldn't leave you alone, and I did. I did it _again_ —"

Erik stopped him right there, pulling out of the backseat enough to hold the man's face in his hands.

"Hey," he admonished, the blue eyes watching him anxiously. "Relax. I'm okay. See? I'm doing okay."

And his words, for once, seemed to express to Charles exactly what he meant, because the pained line between Charles' brows eased away, his dark mouth strengthened into a smile and, even more than Erik had had cause to hope, Charles suddenly reached out and took him around the hips, holding him close and tightly, pressing his face into Erik's throat. Rather than yanking himself away just as quickly, just as unexpectedly, Charles stayed where he'd insinuated himself, and Erik smiled in disbelieving contentedness, putting his arms around Charles' shoulders and holding him back gently, almost tentatively, as someone not wanting to scare away a barely-domesticated animal.

He had the urge, just shy of overwhelming, to put this opportunity towards his own ends, to hold Charles closer, turn his face down to the man's ear, so close, and murmur, "Charles, just fucking date me already. Stay with me now and for whatever future we can eke out between your impossible work and your even more impossible family." But there was the warning chill in his mind, in someplace more instinctive than his mind, that told him to keep his mouth shut and not press Charles for more than the man was ready to give. The man was already in such uncharted lands; he shouldn't drag him deeper afield and possibly instill him with the fear of an ambushed explorer.

When the front door banged open, Erik knew they'd taken from the hectic hour all the quiet togetherness they were going to be able to steal from it. At least Charles didn't jump away from him like a startled cat and thus rush the break. Indeed the man seemed to pull away almost _demonstratively_ slowly. He grinned when Charles looked back at the porch and realized it was just Jenny the photographer, erupting into a blush as she stumbled with homophobic embarrassment back into the house and away from their man-on-man embrace, nearly dropping the cell phone that had apparently drawn her out in the first place. A laugh and a groan battled inside him--Jennifer was a terrible gossip and he couldn't help but feel the whole town would soon know too much of his business, but at the same time the gray look on her face was too priceless to regret.

"Who did you think it was?" he teased, and Charles' face darkened a shade.

"What are you talking about?" he grumbled, and elbowed Erik back to the backseat. "Clean up this mess. It's abominable."

Laughing, Erik went back to work, grabbing his waist coat to fold neatly and stuff in a seat pocket out of his way. He only got a second into folding it, though, when something shiny and metallic fell out of its pocket into the grass. Erik caught Charles' wordless blue gleam of "I told you so" before he stooped to grab his Star of David necklace, which had had no right to be exactly where Charles had said it would be. He was stopped by the dual impetuses of what his eyes saw and what his ears heard.

Before the blood curdling scream could stop ringing in their ears, Charles was already sprinting towards its source in the house, sprinting away from what Erik was trying to show him as soon as his voice could manage it. He could hear the man's steps pounding up the woodwork, before they were drowned out by the thundering steps bounding out, the jumbled chattering of confused, hysterical voices, Charles shouting, "What happened? But what _happened_?"

Finally Erik was able to pull his eyes away, but still the image swam before his eyes. The bright green grass and brighter shine of the metal chain, and the dark warped burnt mass where his six-pointed pendant used to swing—over the image of Hank carrying Kitty, limp and tiny, out of the house in his arms, and he realized where he recognized her from.

They went to synagogue together.


	33. Chapter 33

Kitty went from catatonia to near-hysterical scream-crying within about a minute, which Erik wouldn’t have cared about except that he was trying to talk to Charles. Even if he could have been heard over the crying, everyone else was trying to be heard over her crying—every one of them inaudible with the cacophony of too many voices. Charles didn’t help the matter any, struggling to get someone to tell him what the hell was going on. Despite the number of people, there was a noticeable lack of coherent answer. Jenny had taken off immediately, squealing tires throwing up slick grass before she made it safely over the bridge and _away_. Sean was currently trembling under Alex’s truck. Still, that left Raven, Azazel, Darwin, Hank, Alex, Sean, Jean, Ororo and Kitty, none of whom seemed to want to be anything other than competition for air frequencies.

“Charles,” he growled, tugging on the man’s shirt as Charles struggled to get close enough to examine Kitty. She sat in Ororo’s lap on the tailgate of Alex’s truck, face buried in her babysitter’s neck, one very obvious chunk of hair missing from the back of her head, the reek of burning strands still clinging to her and making Erik feel distinctly light-headed even from this distance. The nausea and the ache in his chest were the only things keeping him from whooping for joy, though. _It wasn’t just him._ He wasn’t going insane. Whatever this was, he wasn’t at the root of it. Emma had been ambiguous, but this was unassailable proof. The half-dollar sized singed gap in Kitty's hair was worth its weight in gold in terms of vindication. Whatever was in that house, it didn’t have some kind of personal vendetta against him. He was obviously taken up in the wide-ranging net of the place, but he was not the sole target, he did not encompass its entirety.

Charles pulled out of his grip, pushing aside Darwin who was blocking everyone’s view trying to photograph the singed gap on the back of Kitty's head.

Somehow, possibly by simple proximity to the vortex of their attention, the man made himself heard. But no one really quieted down until they were trying to listen to Hank.

“We were in the library,” the lanky man explained, fidgeting but persevering as so many gazes were suddenly pinned on him. “My back was just turned for a minute. The temperature gauge spiked and suddenly there was a flash of light and then—just _screaming_.”

“I knew I shouldn’a brought her here,” Ororo sobbed. “Her daddy’s gonna _kill_ me!”

“It’s not your fault, Ororo!” Jean insisted, arm around her friend’s quivering shoulders. “We’re the ones what convinced you ta come! We’re the ones what told you ta bring her!”

Using the gap of leftover silence, Erik struggled to be heard again, forcing his voice out around the bulging pain in his chest, gasping, “Charles,” necklace and blades of grass twisting in his hand. But the man was hot on the trail of something, and had no time for his cuff-pulling. 

“Kitty, darling—Kitty, what happened? Do you recall what happened, dear?”

The girl was losing steam with the hysterics, possibly from simple exhaustion, settling into a breathless, painful-sounding hitching sob that made Erik’s skin crawl.

“Ah-ah-ah-I dinnit mean no-o-o-o harm!” she wailed. “I wars juss lookin at it! I wars gonna put it right ba-a-ack!”

Hank, Darwin, and Charles exchanged a glance and then lit out at a near sprint for the house, Alex replacing Sean who was still hiding under the tailgate “feeling faint”. With a few steps and a lunge Erik managed to grab Charles’ wrist and hold him in place—but he quickly dropped it when the man turned on him with a face that would have been more at home on a rabid badger. The yelp that escaped him seemed to embarrass Charles back to his senses. Deflating, the man threw another blushing glance to the rest of the group vaulting the front steps, and deftly led Erik away from them to where he could apologize in private.

“I’m sorry. I don’t know what came over me…God! I thought it would go after _Alex!_ Alex is closer to your age. Alex is local, Alex has a troubled childhood—”

“--I didn’t have a troubled childhood!—”

“I’d have never let Kitty in if I’d thought this was going to happen. What on earth could you have in common with a _seven_ year old?”

Since this was something he could answer, he interrupted Charles with a thrust of his hand, forcing his necklace, hot and humid from his grip, into unignorable prominence.

“Charles…Kitty’s Jewish.”

Charles stared for a moment, for more than a moment, long enough for Erik to see the comprehension dawn on his face and was granted one moment of proud vindication before the front door broke open and out spilled Hank, Darwin, and Alex, still apparently bickering over who should have the right to carry the book Alex was refusing to give up.

“Are you okay? Did anything happen?” Charles demanded to know, looking squarely at Alex.

“Not a thing,” the boy replied cheerily, apparently much gratified by his hero taking a notice, even if Erik knew it to be a scientific rather than friendly interest. Charles might have preliminary evidence that this house was anti-Semitic rather than geographic in its antagonisms, but he wasn’t going to consider it as anything more than a good theory until all the facts were in.

“The book was still lying there,” Hank informed, using Alex’s distraction to pluck the thing from him.

“Right where the girl must have dropped it,” Darwin added.

“How is she?” Hank remembered to ask, but no one remembered to answer as they huddled around the book.

It was a plain hardback, very old, with worn and curling leather, rubbed down in parts, cracked, leprous. There didn’t appear to be a title that Erik could make out.

“Open it, Hank,” Charles hissed and, after Darwin had snapped a picture on the big digital camera he was still holding, he did so, elbowing Alex’s itching fingers aside.

There was a worn book plate on the inside binding, but Hank flipped past it to the title page first off.

“The New Medical Age,” Erik read aloud. “Being the Complete Study of the Human Anatomy and Its Mysteries.”

The rest of the group simply stared at him.

“You can read that?” Charles was first to balk. Erik just rolled his eyes.

“It’s German, not Japanese.”

“I could read it,” Darwin muttered, frowning at the page. “Mostly.”

“You’re secretly fluent in German as well?” Charles teased.

“Well,” said Darwin. “I took a few classes... In high school…”

“My mother insisted I become fluent,” Erik said, shocked that he’d already been reduced to bragging. Darwin obviously wasn’t any keener on taking the high road.

“I’m fluent in Spanish and that gets me by just fine.”

“Except for right now.”

“Boys,” Charles warned, taking the book and flipping through the pages.

"Ugh," everyone gagged.

"That's...unique," Charles gulped. There were old photographs, or etchings more likely, the book seemed so old. A woman with no legs. A hand being dissected, the skin peeled back from the bones, a child with a tumor on her face, obfuscating one eye. Clearing his voice, Charles flipped back to the front of the book, examining the book plate again. "Hard to make out…”

“Some sort of bird?” Hank offered, pointing out a faded black shape at the top corner.

“Ex libris,” Alex read. “That some kind of devil incantation?”

“Close, dear,” Charles smiled.

“I can’t make out the name, can you?”

“K something something?”

“Some more _Latin_ here,” Hank pointed out some kind of script that flowed across the middle of the page. “ _In…am… est._ Anyone?” Erik wasn’t even sure how he’d made out that much. It looked like little more than chicken scratch to him.

“Maybe another bird, here…or a cloud? Could they be clouds?”

“And there’s a man.” Erik pointed out, the only thing he _could_ make out, a long black shape in the middle of the plate, stumbling and in pain, tortured, being ripped past the human endurance. “Being flayed alive.”

The group went silent, but before anyone could blatantly state that they saw no such thing, Charles wrested the book away and started back towards Kitty and her cooing entourage. Erik followed right behind, deftly escaping any lingering stares.

“Raven! Raven dear, a moment of your time, please.”

“Charles,” she pouted, turning away from where she’d been tutting from afar over the sniffling girl. “She’s calmed down now but I think we need to take her home before someone calls the fucking police. Her mom’s not supposed to be home for a while yet, but if she comes early and no one’s there…or if she calls and no one answers…well, I’m too beautiful for prison is what I’m trying to say. Though Lord knows what new hobbies you might find to entertain yourself with. No offense to…Magnus.”

“Who?” Darwin asked from Charles’ shoulder.

“In any case,” Charles bulldozed through. “Do you think you could take a moment out of your _busy_ schedule to scan and enhance this image?”

Raven frowned at the old book, tossing it around uncaringly in her hands, reopening it and rubbing the nameplate as if it were a scratch Lotto. Charles stopped her with silent but evident aggravation.

“Sure,” she sighed. “What else could my hard-won Photoshop skills possibly be used for?”

“You’re a dear. Take good care of it, now, it’s very old as you can see. Hank, can you give her an evidence bag?”

“I’ll help!” Alex immediately volunteered.

“In return you can take Kitty home and explain to her parents what the _fuck_ happened,” Raven explained cheerily to him, and that wiped the smile pretty cleanly off her brother’s face.

 

* * *

“I don’t think this is what your sister meant,” Erik said as Charles signed his note with a flourish.

“She told me to explain things to her parents,” Charles pointed out. “She didn’t say I had to do it in person.”

“When her hair’s down you kent hardly notice,” Ororo noticed anxiously, resetting Kitty’s hair again beside her in the back seat.

“Maybe you won’t even have to tell Mr. and Mrs. Pryde,” Jean said hopefully. “Maybe they won’t even notice it.”

Kitty just swung her legs happily and focused on her ice cream cone. Like Charles, there was apparently very little sugar couldn’t do towards fixing things, and the little girl was back to normal, tears dry, proper tint returning to once splotchy skin. Looking at her now, no one would ever know the day had been anything but sunshine and bubblegum ice cream. Erik understood the girls’ temptation of letting sleeping dogs lie, and didn’t offer up any advice of his own. They were practically grown; let their goddamned consciences decide what they were going to tell Kitty’s parents.

Charles seemed to agree, passing his note back to Ororo.

“Here you go, dear. I know you’ll do the right thing.”

Looking daunted, Ororo clutched the note in one hand and her ice cream cone in the other. It wasn’t like she was too old for ice cream to make it better, after all.

“Okay, Mr. Xavier,” she sighed heavily, sharing a harrowed glance with Jean.

“You’re sure you don’t want us to drop you off at Sean’s, Jean? I’m sure Alex must have dropped him off by now.”

“No,” the girl sighed bravely, wiping the condensation off her milkshake. “I’m going to stay with Ororo. Are you…are you really gonna let Alex help you with the investigation?”

“I don’t see why not,” Charles frowned, turning around in the passenger seat to properly discuss. Erik let his head fall back on his headrest. It had been time to go five minutes ago when Charles started scrawling his note. He did not have time for these preteen conversations. It wasn’t that he was in such a rush to get back to the motel. It was true this trek had got him out of cleaning up the House, taking all the gear out of it and locking up, but he wouldn’t escape talking shop. As soon as they got back to the motel Erik had no doubt he could only look forward to trying to distract Charles from the mountains of data they still had to sift through. He wasn’t confident in his chances. Charles seemed especially antsy, despite the sugar Erik had suggested they get specifically to keep him from getting antsy. “Now, if you girls don’t mind…”

Jean saw her time was coming to an end, and so apparently got around to what she’d been holding pent up for all this time.

“Mr. Xavier…what was that? What was that that got Kitty?”

Unstoppably, Erik’s spine tensed into a painfully tight bar.

Charles’ answer was anticlimactic.

“I’m not sure darling. But I’m going to try to find out. Now if that’s all…”

Sighing heavily, Jean shot Erik a look he caught in the rearview mirror before pushing out and leading the way up to the Pryde’s house. Charles turned to him immediately, but unfortunately with nothing more than business on his mind apparently.

“Now that we’re alone, why do you think Kitty’s Jewish?”

“Because she’s Jewish,” Erik sighed, getting back on the road. “The Prydes are all Jewish. I don’t know why I didn’t remember it before. Our families have probably gone to synagogue together for generations.”

With a faintly aggravated noise, Charles shook his head, sucking on his milkshake thoughtfully. “But Hank is Jewish…well, partly Jewish…maybe you have to be fully Jewish? But _you_ can’t be fully Jewish—you said you were basically an atheist when I met you.”

“I am an atheist,” Erik frowned. “But it’s not as simple as that. I mean, I still consider myself _culturally_ Jewish… As for Hank, you thought he was a fucking Mormon—”

“Methodist.”

“—so how Jewish can he be, religiously _or_ culturally?”

“How can a house put a demarker—'oh no, this person is not Jewish _enough_ to count'?”

“Please don’t ask me. This conversation is hard enough for me to have already,” Erik growled. He was happy that it earned him some sympathy, Charles laughing and resting his head on his shoulder for a bare moment.

“You should be happy, though! The house is all packed up. You never have to go back there at all if you don’t want to, and I don’t suppose you will want to. Out of your life and gone for good, eh?”

“I don’t know,” Erik mumbled. For some reason it didn’t feel like it _was_ gone for good.

Frowning, Charles said, “You don’t have to come, Erik. To the hotel, I mean. It's over. You can put all this behind you and never think of it again. After all, it's just mountains of evidence, and nothing more, now. It’s nothing exciting. Just business and distraction the whole night through.”

“I shouldn’t get my hopes up for any study-break bed-breaking marathons, is what you’re saying.”

“I’m saying I might not have enough time to glance at you sidewise, much less get you off.”

“Oh well, I’ve gotten off enough for today I guess.”

This joke apparently made Charles feel he wasn’t taking his warning seriously, so the man tried one last time.

“You’re article’s basically written, Erik. This rehashing isn’t going to add anything to it. Haven't you been through enough?”

“I don’t care about the article,” Erik said, and he put his hand down and took Charles’ in his. And the man didn’t pull his hand away. Or open the door and bail from the car.

“I…” Charles choked, and then cleared his throat. When he began again his voice was chipper and purposefully distracted. “If this anti-Semitic idea does pan out it could be a great breakthrough. I’ll give you all credit, of course, if we put it in any article.”

Sighing, Erik put the man out of his misery, and let go of his hand.

“Thanks.”

“I’m sorry,” said Charles, and although Erik didn’t look at him his voice sounded clearly miserable. Reaching over, he ruffled the man’s hair heavy-handedly.

“Drink your malt, dork.”

“Why is it called a malt?” Charles questioned, doing as he was told.

“Because they put malt in it. I can’t believe you’ve never had one before.”

“I’ve seen it on the menu before but I never knew what it was. You’ve opened up a whole new era to my life—I owe you forever.”

“A whole new era of your life,” Erik repeated, because he liked that, he liked the idea of it. The image it evoked developed cracks, chinks where he didn’t want them, when they pulled into the motel parking lot and saw the row of familiar cars.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” Charles asked into the quiet when Erik turned off the car.

“No,” Erik admitted.

With a heavy sigh, Charles leaned back into his seat, closing his eyes.

“Neither am I,” he said.

Erik stared up at Charles’ room and sipped his milkshake now that it had melted to the right consistency. He could turn the car back on. He could get back onto the road and then the highway. They could be in town in an hour. Erik could take Charles out to a nice restaurant, maybe the sushi place with the excellent mood-lighting. He’d take his hand and Charles wouldn’t pull away or start spewing anxious nonsense. Erik would ask Charles to date him, to call him when he got to the next town and the next town, to visit him when he was nearby, to let Erik visit in return when he could spare the minute. And Charles would say yes.

Erik opened his mouth.

But his courage failed him at the last.

“How are you going to know? I mean, if this anti-Semetic theory holds any water?”

“I’m not sure,” Charles admitted. “We haven’t the time left to delve into it now. When we return with the film crew we’ll have to run more tests, I imagine. Bring in more participants and see if anything develops.”

Erik was chilled by how far away that seemed, how long until he could get any answers. “But you don’t think it’s me anymore, do you? I mean, after Kitty. You don’t think it’s a…a poltergeist.”

Charles stared at him, obviously shocked.

“You heard that?” Embarrassed silence seemed to be enough of an answer and Charles went on. “Please, don’t hold that against Darwin. It was just a theory, after all. It was early on and really, data-wise, we had very little to go on, and there was no proof that it _wasn’t_ a poltergeist, after all. They can look very similar to hauntings at times.”

“I don’t hold it against him,” Erik growled, not caring if he was lying or not. “I just want to know: do _you_ think that’s what’s going on?”

Taking a deep breath, Charles gave it his due consideration. “No,” he said finally. “I don’t. I’m not saying that to make you feel better. The evidence just doesn’t fit, as far as I can tell. Although I am woefully inexperienced when it comes to poltergeists. I’ve only ever studied one myself. Not that they don’t have their obvious similarities—poltergeists and hauntings, I mean, what with—”

“You can stop—I already regret inviting you to talk shop.”

“You asked,” Charles pouted.

“And I apologized for that.”

“Did not.”

“I’m sorry. I apologize. Please think of something else for us to talk about.”

Charles frowned at his malt and came up with, “Emma seemed like a joy. I have to say, I’m not sad she pawned _you_ off on me instead of coming herself.”

Erik gasped, because he suddenly remembered. Unfortunately, he did so loud enough that Charles noticed, so he couldn’t pretend that he hadn’t remembered.

“What? What is it?”

“Emma,” he began, trying to figure out what he was going to say. What if Charles wanted it straight from the horse’s mouth? Emma would kill him. Turning to Charles, he used his most domineering face to impart how serious he was about this. “You _cannot_ tell her I told you about this. Forget firing me, she might murder me. Do you _promise_ that you will in no way make it possible for her to suspect that you know?”

“Know what?” Charles gasped eagerly, clutching his arm.

“I think…I think Emma saw something in the house. I think something _happened_ to her.”

“What? What happened?”

“I don’t know,” Erik complained, pulling his arm out of Charles’ pinching grasp. “And you can’t ask her. She’s not above murdering you, either, and I want to keep you around a bit longer.”

“You do?” Charles balked, and seemed inappropriately shocked by the statement. Erik badly wanted to roll his eyes and treat this shock with the disdain it deserved, but he somehow managed to take the high ground.

“Charles, of course I do,” he said, going so far as to stroking Charles’ hair back behind his ear. The man didn’t pull away. “I’d like to keep you around for longer than a bit.”

And Charles looked back at him with those big blue eyes, red mouth parting slightly and breathed, “Is this another serial killer line?”

“What?! No! How is it serial killer-y to say that I want you to stick around?”

“Like, in pieces? In your freezer? For you to make into burgers later?”

Erik glared at him and took him by the hair, holding him still long enough to kiss impatiently on the mouth.

“You’d be the sassiest goddamned burger on the face of the fucking earth.”

Charles grinned back at him, but before Erik could necessarily believe it the smiled had softened, and Charles’ hand was warm on his cheek, and the man had started to move just so consciously forward that Erik’s lips tingled in anticipation—when someone rapped loudly on the window. Charles jolted in his seat, headbutting Erik, who yelped at the sudden shocking pain of it and jolted back away from the impetus, immediately knocking his head on his window.

Raven smiled at the both of them through Charles' window, pointed down at the milkshake still in Charles’ free hand, and called through the glass: “What the fuck is that?”


	34. Chapter 34

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I feel REALLY INTENSELY that there's something I'm forgetting here...but I can't remember what it is. In other news, this chapter is kind of naughty, in that Erik makes rather flippant references about eating disorders which might not be everyone's cup of tea.

 Erik was forced to struggle his way out of his car door, encumbered by a milkshake in each hand because Charles had shoved his at him like a teenager found with his first cigarette.

“As if I didn’t see that!” Raven was deriding, hovering on top of Charles as he tried to vie his way around her to escape upstairs to work.

“I was just holding it!” Charles muttered, rubbing his lips in case a trace was left.

“And I suppose Erik routinely buys two milkshakes for _himself_ , hmm?” she scoffed, rolling her eyes.

“So what if I do?” Erik growled, struggling to get his satchel over his shoulder quickly. He might be sympathetic to her martyrous plight (he could see how it would make someone a bit crazy, having true forgiveness withheld for all eternity) but that didn’t mean he was going to forgive her every interruption of his and Charles’ private time, little of it as there was. He was already forfeiting Charles to an evening of ghost work, was it too much to ask, a minute alone here and there?

“Are you some kind of feeder?” Raven accused, glaring at him viciously. If she’d underestimated him before it seemed she wasn’t doing so anymore, based on that murderous look in her eye. “Are you purposefully trying to get him fat so you can use him in some weird kink fantasy? Is that what you rubes do out here?”

“You’re not helping him by analyzing his daily calorie intake; you’re going to give him a fucking complex!”

“Um, is that Darwin calling? We should probably go help collate the data...” Charles coughed awkwardly. Although Raven and Erik did follow him up to the second floor rooms where Darwin and the team were being housed, they refused to stop their bickering.

“You’ve known him for a day!” Raven hissed at him, elbowing his hip and wincing hard as her arm apparently went dead. “Don’t pretend you’re some expert!”

“You’re going to make him anorexic! He’s not fucking diabetic; he can have a milkshake if he wants one!”

“Oh I’m so sorry, doctor. Are you a psychologist and dietitian in addition to your stringent duties on a _community rag_?”

He shoved her into the stair railing. “Find a nicer way to be needed, idiot,” he growled, and then jumped enough steps to put him alongside Charles, passing him back his milkshake.

“You can throw it up later if she’s so bent on you staying svelte,” he growled.

“I would say it’s not worth it but...” Charles said, eyeing his drink ardently.

“I’m trying to share my culture with you,” Erik decided. “It would be rude of you to decline.”

“I abhor rudeness,” Charles beamed, accepting his milkshake back like a long-lost lover and slipping his hand into Erik’s. His heart fluttered so hard it was difficult to breathe for a second, but it didn’t affect his ability to beam back at the man.

“Why do you need sugar at all when you have all this sickening sweetness seeping out of your pores?” Raven gagged behind them.  

* * *

Darwin seemed surprised to see them, or _him_ rather, a shocked “What are you doing here?” escaping before raising his eyebrows at their clasped hands, a sight which apparently made him forget his question. He blushed and turned away, getting his answer. Charles disentangled himself from Erik to join the computer-gazing fray, abandoning him to the doorway. And so it began.

This motel room was bigger than Charles’, from what he’d seen of it. It had two beds instead of one, and a desk between the TV and the bathroom in addition to the table by the window. Maybe it was the extra furniture or the slew of people, but Erik couldn’t help but feel the place was overwhelmingly cramped, claustrophobic even. Darwin was busy at the desk with a swank laptop set up, Hank and Alex were arguing over a larger computer headquartered by the window, Sean was on a laptop on the far bed, and Azazel was sitting at the end of the other bed watching what appeared to be _Toddlers and Tiaras_ on the TV. Raven shoved past him to join her boyfriend, grinning at Erik self-righteously, so he had nothing to do but go and pin himself to Charles’ side and pretend to be involved in this process and anything other than an obvious fifth (or ninth) wheel.

“Hey what gives!” Sean sat up from his work to wail. “You guys got milkshakes and didn’t bring us any?” Charles was already too invested in Darwin’s computer program to answer.

“I’m reviewing the video now,” Darwin explained, watching footage of the upper hallway at the house. Erik shifted anxiously. He hadn’t realized how much he’d relied on never having to see the inside of that house again until it was here staring him in the face. “Hank’s reviewing the audio and I’ve got Sean on the temperature data. You’re good going over the photographs?”

“Did you bring my computer in?”

“Your bags are on the other side of the bed there."

"Start with Kitty's episode, do you have that pulled up?"

"About that," Darwin sighed, and opened up a program. Erik watched warily, a view of the library, wall of books. Darwin fast-forwarded and Erik wrung his hands. "Here's the first group." Darwin, Jenny and Sean walked into view, apparently scoping the room out for photos. Jenny shook her head no and they went down the stair case. "Now Hank says they weren't more than a couple minutes behind us. "Watch this." Erik didn't, but couldn't resist peeking from the corner of his eye. He turned to watch fully as the view wobbled, swayed, and then dropped. The GoPro hit the floor, bounced. All it showed now was a wall and a dusty floor.

"Damnit, Sean!"

"I know, I know," the redhead moaned. They already chewed me out."

"No more Duct Tape! Ever, do you hear me? Don't ever let me see another roll of Duct Tape as long as I live!!"

"Darwin already threatened to throw me off a building as soon as we find something tall enough. I feel bad enough about it as it is, you know."

"I'm not sure that you do," Charles growled. But he wasn't one to dwell on failures. With a sigh, and after counting to ten a couple of times over, he recovered enough to get back to work.

“I need help with something. Can you put the tape back to when Emma first arrived?”

“Miss Frost?” Darwin balked, glancing up at him from his seat. Erik tensed beside him. What the hell was he doing? Emma would murder him if word got out. Erik was not yet ready for Charles to be murdered by anyone. “Why?”

“I just need to keep track of her movements in the house.”

“You think she did something?” Darwin asked avidly. “Planted something?”

“Excuse me?” Erik growled. Darwin ignored him easily.

“Please, Darwin,” Charles sighed, rolling his eyes. “Sean, I need you to work on this too. When Darwin’s got her movements logged I’ll need you to compare it to the temperature logs. You set those up upstairs, right?”

“Um well there was the one in the hallway…the office…um, then I moved the one from the closet to the bathroom. I noted the time and everything! Just like you said…”

“At least you managed that,” Charles huffed. But Erik could already tell that the bite was out of his voice. Sean would be back in his good graces in no time. 

“What’s going on?” Darwin insisted again.

“I’m not sure yet. I’ll tell you when I know more, of course.”

“I’m sure,” the other man grumbled, apparently unsure.

“To prove it: I think we’ve got a theory for what’s going on here,” Charles said, and with a flourish he brought Erik’s necklace out from his pocket, letting the charred lump dangle in front of Darwin’s face.

“What’s that?” the man asked, grudgingly interested.

“It’s my Star of David necklace,” Erik said, because this might be his only opportunity to speak for the foreseeable future. It earned him actual eye-contact from Darwin. Behind him, Azazel or Raven muted the TV.

“I thought we discussed the Jewish angle,” Darwin said in confusion, glancing between him and Charles. “I mean, Hank is Jewish and nothing’s happened to him…And after what happened to Kitty! How do you explain that?”

“Kitty is Jewish,” Charles explained excitedly.

“Says who?” Darwin growled back.

“Excuse me?” Erik snarled in return. He was getting more than fed the fuck up with Darwin’s attitude. He didn’t know why the man had such a problem with him, other than the fact that it seemed impossible everyone didn’t harbor a latent crush on Charles and maybe Darwin was taking the added competition a little harder than most.

Darwin eluded the confrontation, focusing on Charles instead.

“Is there any _additional_ important evidence you’re holding back on me?”

“No!” Charles balked immediately but before his exclamation was hardly finished he was already changing it to “Yes!” and mauling Erik where he stood.

“Hey!” he balked, faltering back a step as Charles ripped his H2 clean out of his satchel. “I need that!”

“Hank, check the audio on this, would you?”

“My interview’s on there!”

“You’ll get it right back!” Charles placated with not a little exasperation, tossing Hank the recorder and pushing Erik’s hands away when he tried to intercept.

“We’re working on the initial EVP interview right now,” Hank explained with a frown, examining Erik’s recorder.

“Well, when you get a chance.”

“You don’t need to—it was nothing!”

“What was nothing?” Darwin pounced immediately.

“ _Nothing was_ ,” Erik growled back. Darwin opened his mouth and looked at him as if he were finally ready to drag this mess into the open, but Charles interrupted him before he could begin.

“It _might_ be evidence or it _might_ be nothing—Hank and Alex will be able to tell us after they’ve reviewed the footage. Really, Darwin, you know better than to ask for answers before we’ve even properly analyzed the question!”

“Is this a lesson?” Darwin joked, grinning sarcastically up at the man. “Should I be taking notes?”

Wrinkling his nose with a smile, Charles shoved him in the shoulder and took back Erik’s necklace. “You should be shutting your gob and going get me an evidence bag for our newest piece of evidence, you berk.”

“Here, I’ll get it for you!” Alex exclaimed, nearly leaping for a box of supplies nearby, practically vaulting Azazel and Raven, now back into their TV show, to put it directly into Charles’ hands. Erik gave him a heaping dose of glare. He did not need one more person in this world in competition with him for Charles’ attention.

“Thank you so much, Alex.”

“Awe it’s nothing, it was right nearby. Anyway, I couldn’t have Bozo doin in, trippin’ all over those clown feet of his. Could have toppled the whole room down with his monster flailing.”

“If you call me Bozo just _one. More. Time,_ ” Hank threatened in a truly monstrous growl.

“Oh, yeah? What if I do?”

“It’s been like this all day,” Darwin sighed to Charles. Even though Erik was so close it was hard to exclude him, Darwin somehow managed. “It must be love.”

“Sounds about right for this trip,” Charles replied in kind with a roll of his eyes, and Erik grinned embarrassingly wide because he hadn’t missed the way Charles had ever so slightly brushed their shoulders together under the pretext of shifting his weight.

* * *

That moment of quiet camaraderie, the brief electric bolt of affection between them, had to last Erik for a while because almost immediately afterwards Hank got Charles set up with the photographs from the digital camera, he got the paper proofs from the evidence box along with a microscope, and zoned so completely into his work that Erik watched him try for a good thirty seconds to get his milkshake straw into his mouth before he finally succeeded.

Erik tried getting just as invested into his work, since he did have plenty of work to do, but between listening to Alex and Hank bicker about the entire history of EVPs, the death metal seeping out from Sean’s headphones, and mothers on TV telling the world exactly how their three year old was the most beautiful thing on earth if only the judges would open their fucking eyes, it was hard to focus.

“Hey,” he growled to Charles, pulling the man’s arm out from where it was propping him up on the bed. The man just pushed his hand away and continued to scrutinize the photo on his screen. “When will Hank be done with my H2? I need that thing, in case it slipped your mind.”

“Yeah,” Charles nodded back, and reached to pat him on the head, ending up swatting his nose.

He was going to try again, to pin the man down if he had to in order for English to drip through his foggy skull, but he noticed that Darwin was smiling rather joyfully at him, so he scrounged for something official-looking to do.

“How’s it going, baby-ghost-hunter?” he joked to Alex, since he was the only person in the room he could be said to have any modicum of history with.

“Doofus here is trying to explain his ignorant-ass position on the  Rueda tapes in Spain, so please _butt out_ while he digs himself an ever bigger fucking hole,” Alex snarled immediately at him.

“I’m only saying that the recording techniques were archaic and wouldn’t be deemed acceptable in academic circles. God—can we just get back to work? I don’t have time to argue studies with you—I’ve got my own data to analyze!” Hank snapped back, turning a darkening shade of red and snapping on his headphones. They immediately began fighting again as Alex attempted the maul the bigger man into sharing at least earphone with him. Erik backed out of the conversation as quickly as possible.

 _Just wait it out,_ he reminded himself sternly. Charles couldn’t stay glued to his computer all night. He had to stop to eat at some point, surely. If he was serious about dating Charles, it seemed he would have to get used to the man’s single-mindedness not being directed _solely_ towards getting him off. This was always going to be part of the territory. He had to learn to cope with that. If push came to shove he could always lure Charles away with candy and kidnap him for some emergency alone time.

“Just look on the bright side,” Raven whispered into his ear as she dragged him down beside her on the foot of the bed. “You only have to put up with his workaholic bullshit for one more day.”

He shoved her hand off him. He didn’t think for a second this was the bright side to anyone but her. Well, Darwin probably. He was sure now that she was practically counting down the hours until Charles was away from him and safe back in her hen-pecking clutches. He forgot to be too angry with her, though, when her antagonism induced Charles to drawl, “Raven, leave him alone,” proving that Erik did hold some kind of space in his periphery.

“I’m keeping him company!” Raven defended. “Someone has to, and you’re _bu-sy_.”

“If you’re so bored, you’re free to find some entertainment elsewhere. No one’s forcing you to stay here,” said Charles.

Raven ignored him, and Erik pretended he wasn’t included in the direction. He’d rather be near Charles and get ignored than go home alone. There was no one to pay attention to him there either anyway.

He didn’t have to pretend to be distracted when Alex jumped up joy, shouting, “Look! There, there! _Is that something?!_ ”

Confusion reigned for a minute before Hank’s perturbed voice wavered, “Charles?”

This was apparently enough to convince everyone there it _was_ something, and the whole room vaulted furniture to crowd around Hank and Alex and the audio graph taking up their entire computer screen: Darwin shoved into the wall between the desk and the bed and Sean shoved against him and Azazel shoved behind them and Charles shoved beside Sean and Erik shoved against Charles and Raven shoved against him. It was a claustrophobic mess but Erik took what he could get from it. With the press and distraction, he managed to put his arm around Charles’ waist as the man stood in front of him, pressing his palm against Charles' stomach. The brunet didn't seem to notice, strained against the grip in order to see the computer screen more clearly over Hank’s shoulder.

Sighing with the futility of the moment, Erik dropped his hold and tried to understand what everyone was staring at. There was a long white bar with a black line running through the middle of it, jumping and flat-lining like one _very_ irregular heartbeat, one that might show up on an episode of House.

“Is this gonna be bad?” Sean was whining, covering his ears. “I don’t wanna be here if this is gonna be bad...”

“I don’t see it,” Darwin frowned at the screen, reaching out to just brush the uninterrupted flat-line between two jumps.

“I went back too far,” Hank explained, readjusting his glasses and struggling to find elbow room enough through the crush of people to maneuver the mouse.

“Just play it, Bozo!” Alex demanded impatiently, and wrapped an arm around Hank’s shoulder to hit the space bar and unplug the headphones from the audio jack.

“What is your name?” Charles’ sweet sonorous voice asked over the speakers. The screen was highlighted blue where it followed along the black line on the now silent, flat stretch Darwin had just finished stroking, approaching the second jump. “What do you want?”

There was a staticky roar that made them all flinch. Charles' questions were always followed by silence, and silence had been what they'd been expecting, even though the computer screen had warned them, showed the graph full of hiccuping and intertwining new lines.

“Erik,” something rasped like a voicebox scorched, and then again, more voices, one on top of another on top of another, “Erik, _Erik, Erik, **Erik!**_ ”


	35. Chapter 35

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: To celebrate Halloween week I'm going to make up quality with quantity and make three posts this week. It'll be today, during the week, and this coming weekend. In other new, a reader found what I forgot last time! Hank was apparently being unruly a few chapters ago, messing up my continuity, so I'll have to go back and correct him as soon as I figure out what chapter that was. Thank you anonymous reader! When I first had the idea for this story it was sort of as a Horror Movie, but since then it's gotten so massive it's more of a Horror Miniseries (thus all the episodic stops and starts). Much as it pains me to say, I doubt this continuity catch will be the last of its kind. If any of you find silly mistakes, don't hesitate to tell me! Gotta get this stuff up to snuff :) Happy Halloween and happy reading!

PART 1

Even when someone pressed stop the noise still swarmed in his brain, ricocheting there like a bullet, to the point where he thought he was going to throw up. _Erik, Erik, **Erik!**_ In his mind he still heard it. But that wasn’t what was raking across his skin, wasn’t what was pressing in on his eardrums till he thought his mind would burst under its terrible pressure. That was the silence. The complete stillness of a room full of people not making a sound, not stirring a muscle, just standing, and burning him with their eyes, and not allowing him to pretend he had not heard what he wished he had never heard.

“ _ **What**_?!” he shouted, loud enough for the entire group to give a collective flinch. There was something rewarding in it. That one good feeling was his only good feeling, the one spark of reward in the oppressing blackness that pressed in on him. He chased it, looking up, bridling, just  _itching_ for a fight, for _some_ way to release the pent up terror within him.

Most of them looked away. Maybe they could see it in him, this desire to kill something, to maim and to rage. Maybe they were just embarrassed by his outburst, by his wrath. A few refused to be cowed, rose to meet him. Charles, for one, stood his ground, his eyes empathetic and calming, but Erik ignored _him_ for once. The last thing on earth he wanted was to be calmed, to be pacified. The only thing down that road was weakness, was sinking beneath the waves of fear. At least if he was angry he could be strong, he could be powerful, he could _cause_ fear.

Thankfully, Charles wasn’t the only person who refused to retreat from a bit of shouting. His desire for bloodshed was taken up by Darwin, it seemed, whose steady gaze seemed to promise discipline, as of an unruly child throwing a fit in a public place. His tone did nothing to dissuade him of the notion.  

“You need to _calm_ _down_ ,” Darwin bit at him over Sean’s head.  

“I don’t want to hear shit from you!” Erik snarled, taking back the step he’d given up at his first jump away from the shock of the computer’s recording. Darwin mirrored his act, shoving past Sean and Azazel towards him, but Erik anticipated him.

Afterwards, when he’d calmed down, when he was capable of looking back on it clearly, he realized he’d probably been a bit overzealous. He’d been standing there, after all, blocking everyone’s way out. Darwin was an asshole, but he wasn’t the meat-head beat-you-down type. Probably he was only trying to get out—make a big show of being the better man, “I’ll give you a minute to get control of yourself,” he’d sneer, throw into Erik’s face what a child he was being. But Erik would never be able to say for sure what would have happened.

 In the moment, in the heat and blind rage of it, it had felt pretty sinister, the man coming at him like that, pushing past the others and coming straight at him. So he met Darwin at the parting of bodies and shoved him back into the crowd hard, knocking people over like bowling pins, creating a cacophony of surprised yelps and pained shouts.

Everything that followed was a mess of limbs. He thought maybe Sean took a nervous swing at him as he was posturing forwards to further grind Darwin into the earth; he could definitely feel Charles and maybe Raven or Azazel trying to hold him back, and shook them violently away. Darwin’s collar was already in his grip, his free fist already cocked back to drive at him, when suddenly there was a massive hand at his throat shoving him back and back until he hit a wall, and then driving him _up_ \--to the balls of his feet and then his tiptoes and then he was kicking at air and he realized it was Hank--that complete dork of all people, snarling at him, glaring through coke-bottle glasses and Charles was yanking at the man’s arm shouting as Erik realized he couldn’t breathe and started to thrash all the more, his heart not just racing but galloping, exploding in his chest.

“ _Let him go, Hank! Hank!_ ”

The hand finally dropped him, his heels bruising as they connected hard with the floor. He spun straight out the door, coughing painfully, moving blindly, a rabbit sprung from the fox’s teeth, as the room was exploding into shouts behind him. Charles’ voice carried above them all: “ _What on earth were the lot of you thinking? Can’t you see he’s **upset**?!_ ”

Hank’s hand was off him but he could still feel the imprint of it on his throat, feel the choking tightness. He stumbled on the stairs, hitting hard on his knees, catching himself on the metal banister, fumbling back into a sit and rocking, rocking air into his lungs as one did when they had the wind knocked out of them. He pressed his brow to his trembling knees, feeling sickness welling up in him, knowing he was going to throw up, feeling it rising up in his chest, he was going to—with a gasp, a sob escaped him, tears escaped him. His throat closed in on itself, an agony worse than any geek in glasses could bestow, and he was suddenly fifteen all over again, sitting at his mother’s funeral wanting to be as stoic as a man and crying like a child.

He wasn’t sure how long he’d been sitting there. He wasn’t sure how long his painfully stifled crying jag lasted. Not long, he hoped. He’d had enough time, let it runs its course enough, it seemed, that when someone when someone sat down beside him, he was capable of stopping himself fully, of biting back the sobs, of suppressing his tears. All that remained was the dampness on his face, a tight, choking pain in his throat, a suppressed fullness in his chest, the exhaustion of having succumbed.

Charles didn’t say anything, was maybe thinking of the right words to say. For all his silence Erik still knew it was him, knew by his silence and the weight of his company. He was only proven right when the man touched him, tenderly, tentatively, his fingertips at his collar, stirring the hair at the nape of his neck, stroking his overheated skin with fingertips, cool and slightly calloused.

"Erik? Are you okay?"

Shivering, he unlatched his hand from their painful grip on the gravel-crusted concrete steps, reaching back and taking Charles’ hand in his. _This. This_ was real, the weight of Charles’ hand in his, the scrape of the faint calluses, the sturdy bones beneath the cool, pale skin, the short, untended nails that Charles should take better care of. Those voices, how could they be real? How could they be real when they were absolutely nothing like this hand in his? He didn’t have to believe in them if he didn’t want to, regardless of the irrefutable evidence, he decided. There were people out there who denied the Holocaust ever happened and there was way more evidence for that than there was for this. He was allowed to ignore the evidence for this if his mind couldn’t support it, and it couldn’t.

“What you need,” Charles murmured softly, scooting closer, pressing to his side, resting his head on top of his shoulder. “Is a stiff drink and a good fuck.”

He laughed, short and sharp, but it may have ended as a sob. Wiping his eyes on his knees, he corralled enough strength to sit up, looping his arm around Charles’ knees, not taking the risk of Charles thinking he was well enough to pull away. Charles wasn’t under any such delusion, it seemed. He put his arm around Erik’s shoulders, leaning his brow against his cheekbone.

“What was that?” he whispered, shaking. “I mean--what the _fuck_ was that?”

Charles caressed his arm, chest expanding slow and steady against his shoulder.

“Honestly...I’m not entirely sure.”

Erik pulled back, eying him darkly. “ _I don’t want honestly_.”

Grin fading, Charles scraped his teeth over his bottom lip nervously, darkening it. Because it seemed by his silence that Charles couldn’t lie just to make him feel better, couldn’t say it was nothing or that it was a glitch, a mistake. He couldn’t manage, or stubbornly refused on grounds of principle, to give anything but honestly. “I’ll look into it.”

Frowning bitterly, Erik watched an ant toiling on the concrete and wished he had a cigarette. Something to do with his hands, his mouth, something to distract him. He hadn’t smoked since his last finals week. He’d never missed it so much as right then.

“Why me?” he questioned, breath hitching, straining almost to the point of breaking. “I’m not the only Jew in town. Why is it saying _my_ name? Why not Kitty’s?”

“Maybe it is,” Charles placated. “Maybe we just haven’t gotten to that part of the audio yet.”

Erik shook his head. It was the same as in the vent; it was his name and no one else’s. The house had attacked Kitty but it downright _stalked_ him.

“I don’t understand. I just don’t understand. I’ve never even been to the house before now. How does it even _know_ my name?”

“We’ll get to the bottom of this, Erik. I promise.”

 “Don’t lie to me. It’s bad enough without you fucking lying to me. You’re _leaving_ , remember? You’re bailing at the first opportunity and leaving me holding the bag. What the hell do you think you can get to the bottom of in twenty-four hours?”

“I can think of at least one thing,” Charles joked, squeezing his side. Erik bit the inside of his mouth to force himself not to smile, and just managed it, keeping his face as cold as he felt.

“You’re leaving tomorrow and this is what you’re leaving me with. A house that’s out for my blood and so many questions with no pleasant answers that my fucking head could explode. This is not what I fucking signed up for.”

 _I’d have never even stepped foot in that house if it weren’t for you,_ he thought, and like a wormhole it opened in his mind a glorious alternate reality, where he’d written a dumb article about a church bake sale or the latest Boy Scout swim badge, he’d never gone to the Gone-Away House, never heard anything, never seen anything, could sleep at night without ghosts or demons or poltergeists even once crossing his mind.

But even in this state, he knew better than to say it out loud, could see the line he shouldn’t cross. Because even in the back of his mind he was going to bed _alone_ not thinking of ghosts or demons or poltergeists. In the back of his mind there was no brunet at his side with his arm persevering around his waist, knee pressed to his, his jeans hanging loose over the other man’s heels. For all the horrors of these recent days, that seemed the biggest horror of all.

“I…” Charles struggled. “I can still help. I can…call people or…everything’s online now. I can still investigate this.”

Erik allowed a helpless smile then, a roll of his eyes. “ _I’m_ the journalist. Interviewing people, tracking down histories, these are my fortes, not yours. You’re facts, right? Data and numbers. Quantifiable and well-ordered. How are you supposed to get that a hundred miles away?”

“I won't be a hundred miles away,” Charles said softly, and the press of his hand over Erik’s on his knee seemed determined, downright _demonstrative_. Erik turned, couldn’t help but turn, and stare, and Charles held his gaze, scared, something very deep in him _obviously_ scared, but overlaid on top of that was layer upon layer of a breathtaking strength that maybe wasn’t constantly, readily available, but was powerful in its own right when it could be unsheathed. It put into stark contrast how frail, how exhausted Erik felt by this whole experience.

“I don’t have to deal with this, right?” he whispered desperately, hand tightening on Charles’ loose jeans. “It can say my name all it wants. Who cares? I’m never going to be there to hear it. I’m never going back there. It don’t have to remember. It can’t make me remember.” He was hyperventilating he realized, which was strange because it felt as if he weren’t getting _enough_ air, if anything.

Charles held him tighter, massaging his lungs until he could breathe again. “Erik,” the man murmured quietly into his hair. “This...this isn’t something you can just forget.”

Eyes closed against Charles’ throat, Erik knew better. He could forget if he wanted to. Maybe he wouldn’t be able to forget the _facts_ , but the facts would lose their power without the emotions behind them, and he could change the emotions. He didn’t have to be afraid. He could be angry; he had proven that just now. He didn’t have to fear that house, he could just hate it; hate it and stay far away from it.

But this concept seemed unattainable at the moment, when he was still so raw and shaking from the brunt force of everything that had happened to him recently. He knew that if he were in top form he could convert fear into hatred no problem, but at the moment he felt so much like either crying or going insane from confusion, from antagonization, that he could hardly see the path towards rage. He was walking blind, with only Charles as guidance, and Charles’ path never seemed to veer towards rage. But his path was good too, would do in a pinch--at this point any trail that lead away from how he was feeling at that moment was worth it. And it wasn’t like this mode of escape didn’t come with definite perks.

Resolute, he pressed close to Charles’ body and shifted up, pressing in. But he went still when Charles shied away before their lips could meet, not enough to keep himself from getting kissed if Erik was really determined, but enough for his objection to be noted.

His eyes were wide and wary when Erik joined their gaze, and the man explained softly, “I don’t actually have the authorization to prescribe anything, much less alcohol and sex. You could sue.”

Grinning, Erik stroked Charles' hair back and assured, “I waive my right to an attorney.”

This pledge was all Charles needed apparently. He smiled back, and then struck forward, kissing Erik so rough and pitilessly that Erik gasped, unwittingly breaking open for Charles’ tongue to drive inside and completely dominate his own even on its home turf. The man kissed him so hard and unexpectedly that he was pushed back against the railing, and then Charles’ hand was digging into the collar of his shirt and he was being shoved down against the craggy concrete steps, the man sliding over him and slipping a thigh between his legs, dragging the appendage over his swelling cock so ecstatically that Erik had to break away to breathe, staring in awe as Charles grinned down at him mischievously, licking his own saliva off those abused-red lips.

Erik didn’t think he’d ever gotten so hard so fast in his entire life.

“What the hell?” he gasped, and immediately wished he hadn’t said it because Charles might take it the wrong way and think it meant some dislike at this treatment, when in actuality Erik was only shocked that he had never thought of it himself. What enjoyment was it to hit Darwin, get in a brawl, prove his strength with fists? Charles’ mind had immediately struck on a much more enjoyable way to prove to himself that he wasn’t going to break: let someone try to break him.

Erik got the uneasy, trembling feeling that Charles knew because he’d experienced it first hand before, but was forced to stop when Charles pulled him forward by the collar.

“Get up,” the man rasped. “Before I take you right here on these steps.”

Erik knew, as he scrabbled to do what he was told, that he should be surprised, scandalized even that he liked this as much as he did. He was sickly, battered and bruised by these last couple days. It wasn’t strange to want to be taken in hand after all that, that wasn’t so shocking, but he thought most people in Charles’ position would have tried a bit of tenderness, tried coddling and murmuring. And most men in Erik’s position would have taken it, too run down and exhausted to desire anything more active. But Erik felt without a doubt that if Charles had tried it he would have left, gotten in his car and driven off, furious and unfit to man a vehicle.

He did feel exhausted and torn down, but treatment like that could have only underscored it, _proved_ it. On top of everything else, he didn’t think he could have taken that.

And luckily, Charles didn’t seem keen on offering it.

It felt good, better than anything, to hand himself over to the smaller man for safe-keeping, to take all responsibility out of his own hands and shove it off onto Charles until he was strong enough to take it up again. He thanked his lucky stars that Charles was willing, eager even, to take it on--to take care of him and please him without that tenderness that hinted at pity. It had been so long since he’d had this, since he’d been driven to seek it out, and he couldn’t tell if it had always felt this amazing and he’d simply forgotten, or if this heady sort of power was new. And it was a sort of power, strangely. Not the same as when he topped where he took everything open to him, but the power of baring himself open and deciding what he would allow to be taken.

* * *

Despite an immodest amount of groping on the stairs, they were soon fumbling with the door key at Charles’ room, Erik pressing up behind him and palming him through his jeans, working him into a fervor, rolling his hips against the man’s ass, hissing into his hair, chomping at the bit. He wanted this, _god_ he wanted this, this headlong roller coaster barreling him further and further from where he had been, emotionally, a sobbing child on a motel staircase.

“I should add a disclaimer,” Charles gasped, head kicking back against Erik’s shoulder and baring his neck, hips working against him instinctively. “It’s immodest for me to claim that this will count as a good fuck. Who knows? You may hate it.”

Charles, he realized, was babbling. Grinning, his teeth catching at the man’s throat, his dug his deft fingers fully into the fork of those wishbone legs, massaging that cock to absolute attention. With his other hand he turned the door card the correct way, pressed it in for the correct amount of time, opened the door while the light was green, and shoved both of them inside.

For all his clumsiness at the door, Charles was perfectly capable once they were inside. In one graceful move he had Erik out of his ignored satchel and suit jacket, gripping him by the waist of his slacks, and was walking him backwards over the discarded clothes littering the floor, flinging him onto the bed and clamoring up eagerly. The few times Erik had allowed himself to be dominated so fully (mostly when he was young, all when he was feeling especially stressed the fuck out), he could see in his partner’s eyes how seriously they took their job of calling the shots. To retain their authoritative stance, they tended to look as if they were there to audit him rather than fuck him mindless.

He should have known better with Charles, of course, but he somehow hadn’t, and so seeing Charles’ gleeful, ecstatic expression as the man slid him further up the sateen bedspread was surprising, and exciting as hell. Charles’ lips were on him hard and plying, sucking him clean, cracking him open like a frail egg, tongue rough and savory in his mouth, lips working him over till he couldn’t think of anything outside of their scope and promise. On top of that were the hands scraping lines of heat into his skin, over his neck, his shoulders, into his hair and dragging, making him moan low and wanton into Charles’ mouth. Charles slid over him, flexing his hips over Erik’s, settling between his splayed thighs and giving him a dress rehearsal of what was to come, how the man’s cock would flex into him, how his hips would coil and relax in a rhythm slow enough to be maddening but deep enough to be rapturous.

Not bothering with the pretense of control, Erik thrust back, rapid and pleading, scooped his hands down and gripped the swell of Charles’ gorgeously curved ass, dragging him in closer. The man shifted, one arm tucking under Erik’s shoulder and gripping hard into his hair, yanking his head back roughly to allow access to his throat, the other hand pawing his shirt loose and shoving up until he was tweaking and massaging a nipple, dragging blunt nails over his rib cage in a way Erik had never known could be so damned pleasurable.

“Please,” he groaned out long and wrecked, twisting under the assault. “Please, Charles. I need it, please.”

Charles didn’t reply, but slid heavily down his body, and fumbled, with much purposeful palming, until his fly was undone.

He’d never been good at figuring out where to put his hands during a blow-job. Mostly when it was good he ripped bedding or tried to weed his scalp, when it was bad he cleaned his nails, and when he just didn’t give a fuck he gripped hard into his partner’s hair and dragged them in just farther than they were exactly comfortable going. Afterwards he blushed and felt bad, but somehow at the time it always seemed like something he could get away with.

When Charles gripped him gently at mid-shaft and lapped at the leaking slit of him, there was no room for planning. He huffed and writhed and yanked on the man’s hoodie. When Charles _engulfed_ him, sucking just the head of him and then bobbing back, returning just scarcely farther along, again and again until his lips were grazing his still fingers, Erik’s hands moved on their own accord. One shifted up, thinking there was something helpful in clutching his own abdomen. The other was actually capable of making informed decisions without the input of his brain. It wisely moved to the top of Charles’ head and simply rested there, reveling in the rise and fall, the gorgeous rhythm, the soft curls.

When his eyes could find the strength to stay open, he stared adoringly down at this man who could instill pleasure even in the most harrowing of times. Charles was a Civil War nurse delivering aid, a Red Cross worker bringing peace. He was making Erik babble like a loon even within the confines of his own skull, dear god....

“Charles,” he moaned as the man created a vice with his rosy-red lips and saintly mouth, gasped when he relented. “Charles, fuck me. God, fuck me. I need you to fuck me. Please fuck me.” The babbling would not be confined to his mind, it seemed.

Charles fisted his cock a moment, spreading his leftover saliva down the shaft, the point of his thumb dragging up the underside, circling the head and nearly making him writhe right off the bed.

“Didn’t you hear me?” he about shouted, yanking Charles’ shirt petulantly. Grinning back at him, the man slackened his hold and crawled up, caressing their mouths together and acquainting Erik with his own desperate, salty taste.

“I guess this would be a bad time to tell you I’ve forgotten my overnight bag in the other room?” the man laughed weakly, looking as if he might throw up, or crawl into a hole in the ground and hide there until Erik could forgive him, possibly after a few years or so.

“So?” Erik panted, sitting up on his elbows to gain enough altitude to think clearly. “I think you can go a little while without _Jane Eyre_ for fuck’s sake. Literally.”

“I think you’re forgetting that all of my _condoms_ are in my overnight bag.”

Erik shook his head with a dumb laugh.

“Well, you’re a man, aren’t you? Don't you have a spare in your wallet?"

Charles frowned at him suspiciously.

“This must be a Yankee tradition. I don't believe I've ever heard of it.”

“Thank god I have, then,” he sighed. Dropping back to the bed, he motioned lazily towards the door where his satchel had been pulled from him. “My wallet’s in there somewhere.”


	36. Chapter 36

PART II

Charles still had some modicum of control left to him, enough that he did not upend Erik's satchel all over the floor as Erik himself undoubtedly would have if he'd been assigned the task. Instead the brunet dug through, getting more and more frustrated the longer it took to find, tossing out an empty gum packet and a balled up piece of paper, which was apparently interesting enough for Charles to get distracted.

"What is this?" he questioned, unballing it.

"It is not a condom, I know that," Erik growled back. He grinned at the man as he reached down and started stroking himself, carefully and slowly. "Should I see to this myself while you figure it out?"

Charles glared at him, tossed the paper away, and snatched out his wallet.

"Hefty as this thing is, it does not feel as though I'll find lube in it."

Fuck.

"Don't you have _anything_? I'm not a discerning bottom, especially at this point." 

Frowning, Charles started to go through his own duffel bag, which had already been pawed through at some point, spewing T-shirts and slacks by the TV.

"Is face moisturizer oil-based?" Charles questioned, turning around with a small bottle.

"At this point I really, really don't care."

Charles didn't seem to either. With lotion in one hand and wallet in the other he bounded up onto the bed, straddling Erik's hips and grinding down on him with just enough pressure to make Erik groan and arch up against him.

"Take your shirt off," the man demanded, circling his hips and flipping through his wallet. "Post script: your driver's license photo is absolutely adorable. Please grow your hair out again at the earliest convenience."

Snorting, Erik pushed the wallet away with one hand and grabbed Charles' jean front and dragged him down hard against him, moaning in the instant before Charles knocked his hand away and pinned him to the bed with a hard grip to his collar.

"Do that again," Charles smiled. "And I'll have to punish you."

* * *

Charles unbuttoned Erik's shirt, peeled it off him around kissing and caressing, slid his undershirt up and off, eased his pants and underwear down and off, took off his shoes and even his socks and only in some distant, dreamy part of his mind did Erik think it sort of amusing, being undressed like this, like a doll. In the close-at-hand part of his brain, ardor left no room for amusement.

"Turn over," Charles directed. But he wasn't sure how Charles expected him to be motivated for that with the way the man was sucking on his hipbone. Then the man slid his hands up the backs of Erik's thighs, digging painfully into the flesh of his ass and biting down on his stomach.

"Ow—okay, okay!" he hissed, pushing the man off him and turning over. Charles took the opportunity to stand and toe off his shoes, pulling hoodie and T-shirt together over his head.

"You look amazing like this," the brunet murmured, standing there and taking him all in so that Erik shivered with anticipation, flexing against the satiny bedspread.

"Don't take my picture again," Erik warned, glaring as much as he was capable of, looking up at the man still dressed in his over-long jeans and not looking like he was going to take them off soon.

"You're lucky I haven't a camera on me or I'd be sorely tempted," the man laughed and laid down beside him, his clothed leg slipping between Erik's naked ones, his hand caressing over Erik's back and hips, kissing his temple, his shoulder.

"Take those pants off and put that condom on," he suggested, rolling his hips under Charles' hand.

"I think you might be an even bossier bottom than you are a top," Charles teased, but pulled the packets out of Erik's open wallet. "What?" the man huffed, dropping them both on Erik's spine, making him flinch and laugh. "Now this is just excessive. How much unplanned sex do you generally expect to have?"

"It's not like they're one size fits all," he justified.

"For the general population they usually are," Charles said, sweeping them off the table of his back and taking the space up himself, covering Erik like a half-naked blanket and setting him on excitable edge with nothing more than the noise of a lotion bottle snapping open.

The man sat up he wanted to tell him to not be too thorough, that he wanted to feel this tomorrow, slight but noticeable, but he'd already gotten called bossy once and, as Charles massaged his hip and slid into him slow and sure, he suddenly got the idea that he should just let Charles take this one, just let him take care of it, lay back, relax, enjoy it all.

Enjoy it he did, moaning deeply into the pillow he was suddenly smothering himself with as Charles added a second finger and slid perfectly home without further preamble, leaving him feeling perfectly rushed, stretched.

"Is that okay?" Charles questioned, voice vibrating over Erik's skin before he kissed his spine. Another moan had to suffice as his answer, and the creak of Erik's knuckles fisting in the covers.

Charles didn't rush him on the third finger, just scissored and spread, hitting that spot only when he felt like it despite knowing exactly where the fuck it was. When he did hit it, Erik could never anticipate how it was going to happen: soft and teasing, a bare brush of fingertips, a grazing grind, a purposeful plunge, or the kind of wrenching stab that drove him about out of his skin. There were three fingers digging inside him before he knew it and he couldn't even tell for how long they'd been there. All sense of time seemed measured in heartbeats, in hot breaths on his skin, in rhythmic thrusts inside of him.

 _Fuck me, fuck me,_ he thought, but couldn't find breath to speak it. Charles was psychic, Erik had long ago decided, but must have been distracted because he didn't hop to. It took a demonstrative tug on long brown locks to get him to remember what they were prepping him _for_.

Charles gave a parting kiss and bite to his side, nuzzling his skin before pulling back. "I take it you're ready for me, my lovely?" the man huffed against him, giving one more brush against the prostate for sweet parting before slipping out from him.

Erik tried to answer, maybe managed to mumble something, but if he did it was lost in the noise of Charles slipping off the bed. Somehow, slowly, Erik realized the man was stripping and turned to watch, smiling drowsily at the pale expanse of skin as Charles peeled off his borrowed jeans and underwear, reaching out to stroke between the man's muscular legs, grinning up at his strangled moan.

"I can't wait to get you inside me," he admitted. Maybe he'd been too emotional all day for any embarrassment or chagrin to fit into his arsenal now. All he knew was, he was nothing but pleased with the man's reaction. Groaning, eyes fluttering closed before he gripped Erik's wrist hard, Charles warned, "Then you'd best stop that or I'll never get around to it."

Erik stopped, hugging his pillow to himself instead with an eager, sleepy grin. He definitely did want Charles to get around to it.

The first thing Charles did was arrange him to his specifications, like a very adult doll, pushing Erik's legs apart, drawing one knee up enough to keep him off his stomach completely. Erik discovered he loved the feel of Charles over but not touching him, the heat and the haunting sensation of being hovered over. The man's knee pressed into the mattress beside his, his hands weighted the bedspread on either side of him.

Nice as hovering was, he liked it too when Charles dipped down, nuzzling his hair, the back of his neck, rubbing a stubbled cheek against his slick shoulder, licking down his spine, kissing his prominent hipbone. He shifted up, caressing his hands up Erik's taut thighs, brushing his fingertips to the inside line, pressing his thumbs into the flesh of his ass and suddenly dragging him apart and open.

Erik's eyes popped wide where he was pressed into a tortured pillow, breath catching in his throat at the shock and awe of the moment. To have Charles--sexy but definitely _sweet_ Charles--digging rough fingers into his flesh and spreading him wide open and simply _looking_ at him, viewing all of him--it was a surprise and Erik was equally amazed to realize he found it rather _hot,_ quivering somewhere between surprise and ardor.

He thought it slipped a little further towards ardor when he heard Charles' erratic, puffing breath, felt the man's thumb shift over and caress the entrance of him, gasping when the Brit's rough thumb edge caught the rim of him. He moaned breathless into the pillow, realized he was drooling and tried to swallow but there was so little breath to go around that he could barely manage the pause that swallowing required. His hips were working on their own will at this point, flexing impatiently into the debauched bedspread. Somewhere very far back in his mind he thought of those black-light news segments from TV, but it was chased off with the soul burning anticipation he was currently experiencing. 

"I'm really very sorry if you regret this in the morning, Erik," Charles huffed, reaching around his hip and ghosting his fingertips along Erik's pulsing cock. "But it would take greater willpower than I possess to stop now."

Erik badly wanted to use Charles' own line on the man and tell him that if he didn't hurry up and fuck him then he'd toss him over and do it himself, but somehow when it came out it sounded like "Please, Charles, oh, oh, please." Worse, it came out as practically a sob and definitely a whine, he wanted the man inside him so badly. Somehow he would get his revenge on Charles for driving him to the point that he could sob and beg for sex all at the same time. He would get his sexy, sexy revenge.

Or maybe not, since Charles went suddenly obedient and knelt purposefully between Erik's splayed legs, massaging his shoulder with one hand and guiding his cock right into the tight confines of Erik's center with the other.

He groaned for every thick inch of it, stretched so full, filling up so slowly but surely, about smothering himself in the pillow, writhing every joint into the mattress. Unwittingly, he accidentally wriggled away from the penetration for a moment, but Charles pulled him back and he didn't fight it. He seemed to completely blank out for a moment and when he came to he was huffing weakly into humid cotton with Charles pressed fully against him, all the way in.

"God," he hissed blankly, and couldn't resist but to tighten down on that strange intrusion inside of him. How long had it been since he'd allowed himself to be used like this? Plunged into like fresh snow and split open like a ripe peach? Too long, he could feel by the deep ache Charles' cock was already creating inside him, the feeling as if it were shoving out of its way his internal organs, surprisingly little room left inside him, as if his insides were now straining at the confines of his skin.

"Oh sweet fuck, Erik," Charles gasped, most likely due to his sudden clampdown. He attempted to relax around the intrusion, twisting his spine and pressing his shoulder into the trembling man buried so deep inside him. Charles got the hint, had to slip slightly out of him to shift upwards and kiss him as thoroughly as this distraction allowed.

"You're amazing, Erik, so amazing," the Brit murmured against his lips, flicking out and licking them. He skimmed a hand up Erik's chest, massaging his nipple to a point and then dipping down to stroke his cock. When Erik thrust into the tunnel of his hand it shifted the man's cock inside him beautifully.

Aching already, Erik took one last panting kiss for good measure and turned back, rubbing his face into the damp pillow, sighing as he ground back testingly against Charles' hips. He made sure his knee was keeping him from completely stifling his sensitive shaft under his weight and Charles started to rock back into him, setting a slow but thorough pace that kept him on the edge of outright sobbing. He blamed it on the way Charles' thighs dragged up against him when he thrust, the way the man's fingertips ruffled the tip of his cock, dragging leaking precum over the shaft of him, the way he nuzzled into Erik's increasingly sweaty hair, licking beads off his shoulder before biting down gently, nibbling and suckling him and driving him fucking mental.

It only got worse, or better, he wasn't sure which, as the man increased his rhythm.

"Sorry, darling," Charles hummed, exchanging his cock for his hip, dragging him in closer and not so much thrusting as _coiling_ into him, doing his best rendition of a corckscrew. Erik could only moan into his muffling cotton, arching his back to get more of the man, taking over Charles' duties on his cock at an admittedly quicker, more punishing pace. Despite the copious dollops of precum oozing out of him it was still slightly uncomfortable and while he thought he rather liked the uncomfortableness a bit, he still reached around, his first thought to still Charles' hips rolling into him like a twisting, rocking wave in order to plead after some extra lube, but somehow he ended up digging his hand into Charles' flesh and dragging him only closer.

 _God_ but it was so good to feel the beat of Charles' hips as they flexed into him and relaxed out of him. He didn't ever want to be rammed into again--all he'd want for the rest of his life was this incredible coiling action that was so hard to describe, even to himself, so that he tucked it away under muscle memory and sensation rather than with any sort of tagline (besides maybe _'fucking incredible, do this always_ ').

Charles seemed to like it too; his breathing was quick and pitched against Erik's shoulder, the man's hips increased the pace beneath his hand as he dug his fingers into the smooth skin, definitely leaving marks.

"I need," he gasped, thrilled at the way his voice hitched on every thrust. "Give me..."

He couldn't finish, lost his train of thought as Charles shifted his hips back and twisted in again, sparking a line of electricity up his spine that shorted out his brain; all he could do was gasp and shiver and rock his hips back harder onto that driving cock. Charles groaned, rumbling into his sweaty skin, scraping his teeth over the flesh and then nuzzling into the mark. His hips became quick and erratic for a moment before they manfully came back under control.

Erik gave up on trying to relearn English and simply spared as much saliva as he could manage into his palm, pulling grudgingly away from his hold on Charles' muscular ass.

Hand securely back on himself, he gasped in breath and shoved up a little further onto his knees, just so he had the leeway to arch back to meet Charles' thrusts, slamming himself down, whole body tightening with the pleasure of it and the heady power of making Charles' breath stammer, of making him call out shrilly, of making him scrabble at Erik's hip and shoulder like he was searching out the hold that would save his life.

"God fucking damnit, hell," Charles hissed, pulling back and ignoring any concept of strategy at this point, snatching only enough space to properly meet Erik roughly on every thrust, not bothering to set his own rhythm but simply following Erik's, fast and ruthless.

Erik was on edge already, hand slipping unbearably quick within the tight confines between hips and bedding. But it was a done deal when Charles grabbed him by the back of the thigh and shoved him agonizingly open, legs spread so wide he heard his hip crack. Then the man thrust inside of him, hard and determined, and hit that exact fucking spot that made him shout a barely muffled version of Charles' name, and rather than letting him reclaim his mind afterwards, he dove back in and hit it again--again and again and again until Erik was crying the man's name and coming so hard he couldn't think--speak--breathe--all of it was beyond him and around him and on him he couldn't manage it and when things made sense again he realized Charles hadn't come. Despite the constrictive spasms of his orgasm, Charles hadn't come.

When the Brit sensed Erik was capable of cohesiveness again, he dropped down, draped across Erik from shoulders to coiling hips, shifting his weight into those erratic thrusts, hitting everything that was oversensitized and rent within him.

"Tell me," the man gasped, biting Erik's shoulder, holding him partway around the waist and jerking into him raw and irregular. "Tell me...you want it. Tell me you _like_ it."

That was easy even in Erik's taxed state. Her grappled his hand back, clutching it over Charles' on his shoulder, and assured, "I love it; I love it," gasping and hitching and groaning. Once he started saying it he couldn't stop, could only mingle it with anything else that came to mind, which was all Charles' name and demands to come in him, to fuck him, he loved it, he loved it.

Groaning low, the man's hips lost all restraint and rattled into him in trembling shudders, coming hard and passionately. Only when Charles gulped in heavy and huffing, did Erik realize the man had been holding his breath. The thrusts slowed, wound down to a grudging stop; he just lay there with his head resting heavily between Erik's shoulder blades, breathing in gulps, and stroked his ribs absent-mindedly.

Erik's own mind didn't seem to come back to him until Charles did pull away, falling over to his side with a breathless, recovering laugh. Until then it was still focused on the wide stretch of Charles' slowly-calming cock inside him, couldn't resist tightening down on it a little, just to feel it. He shivered lonesomely when Charles pulled out of him, feeling all too acutely the jarring emptiness of his own body without Charles there filling him. It made him realize what he had to do, and put the question in too stark of relief to put it off any longer.

"Charles," he gasped, reaching over to touch the man's shoulder, his chest, to just touch his skin. "Charles, will you date me?

"My god, I am good," the man laughed, reaching down and touching himself. "I've addled your brain."

"My brain is not addled," Erik growled, forcing himself up to his elbows to glare at the man as he escaped to the sink to toss the condom and wet a hand towel. "I'm being serious!"

"Hm," Charles just said, coming back and scrubbing him down for a second before pulling the slick bedcover out from under him and onto the floor, fighting the covers to tuck them both in together. "Well?" Erik asked, refusing to let himself nod off even with his head heavy on Charles' shoulder.

"Well what?" the man yawned.

Erik punched him lightly in the ribs, head-butting his jaw and fully considering giving it a demonstrative nip.

"Well about dating me!"

"Don't be silly," the man argued, putting his hand over Erik's eyes. "Go to sleep."

"Sleep! It's five o' clock!"

"I doubt it. Well, rest then."

Erik relaxed back against his body, holding the man around the waist but refusing to close his eyes. "I'll rest if you agree to date me."

With a deep breath, Charles pushed him over onto his back, frowning down at him on the pillows. "Stop that. I'm serious now."

"Stop what?"

"Stop joking like that."

He didn't get upset. Maybe he was too exhausted to be upset at this point. He just reached up and stroked his hand back through the man's damp hair, tucking loose strands behind his ear.

"I'm not joking," he said. "I've been thinking about it for ages. This wasn't quite how I was going to you, but I'm asking you. Seriously."

Closing his eyes, Charles' put his hand firmly over Erik's mouth, pressing their foreheads together.

"You've had a very long day," Charles murmured. "Please just rest. This is not something you need to be worrying about right now."

But now worrying was exactly what Erik was doing.

So when Charles laid back down beside him, Erik got up to his arm, staring down at the man with his heart in his throat, pounding uncomfortably.

"What?" he questioned past the impediment. "Why…why won't you answer? Is it…is there someone else?" Determined to get to the bottom of it, he refused to back down from the uncomfortable question. "Is it Darwin?"

"Darwin?" Charles scoffed, seemed genuinely surprised at the idea. That was rewarding at least.

"Well, what then? I'm not saying you need a reason, I mean, if you just don't…don't like me like that…"

"It's not that," Charles said, brows furrowing painfully. "Erik, you…you don't know what you're asking for."

"I know you're busy," he argued, to prove that he did know the particulars of what he was talking about. "Filming and stuff, I know you're on the road a lot, obviously, and I'm not asking you to move here and it's not like I'm talking about moving in with you or anything for fuck's sake; I know it'd be a lot of long-distance but…but I think it'd be worth it. We're on the same coast, at least, we don't live that far apart."

"Proximity has nothing to do with it," Charles growled. "Erik, just stop."

And the man was legitimately upset, he realized, was even a little angry, and Erik was so surprised that he didn't press, didn't argue because his brain had shorted out in shock and couldn't come up with any argument. He hadn't been expecting this. Charles was so even-keel. Maybe he hadn't been waiting for an easy 'yes', but he certainly hadn't expected such a bitter 'no'. Luckily, a spell of silence seemed to be what Charles needed to accrue some reserve sentences.

"It's not…look, I don't know what I did, or said, or lied about to get you to think this would be something you'd want. I can't give you what you want. I can't give anyone what they want."

Charles' voice was getting pitchy, maybe even borderline hysterical, so Erik gave him some breathing space before he said, slowly and calmly, "What is it you think I want?"

Gulping, staring off into space with a rather wild gaze, the man babbled, "I don't know. At first I thought maybe you just wanted someone to get your rocks off with, and I was okay with that, I can definitely handle that, I like that. But now… I don't know. Someone to take care of you? And you have to see how impossible that is. I _am_ busy and I _do_ travel and my god my sister hardly trusts me to take care of _myself_ , how could I take care of another human being? How could you trust me to make even the most nominally decent go of it?"

"Hey," Erik growled. "I understand…I get why the last few days would lead you to believe that I need some extensive and time-consuming seeing-to, but I'll have you know that before all of this my high school voted me Boy Least Likely to Require Coddling." Charles was apparently convinced enough to allow this a slight laugh and Erik fought on, caressing the man's hair. "Trust me when I say you can handle this."


	37. Chapter 37

Erik could feel himself falling asleep, the heavy, languid drift of it, like sinking to the bottom of a warm lake, and forced his eyes open. “Where are you going tomorrow?”

Charles’s brows furrowed, but his eyes remained closed, the dark lashes fanned out on his sun-pinkened cheeks. Trying to play dead? Had Erik not spoken clearly enough, groggy as he was? He squeezed the hand he was holding between their bare chests half under the covers.

“Maine,” Charles grit out sleepily.

“Maine? What the hell’s in Maine? You investigating an author’s haunted den?”

“It is a house,” the man opened his eyes to glare, but he was only half awake; it seemed a lot tamer than usual. “A haunted house, if you want, possibly, same as here.”

Erik couldn’t help the snort that escaped him, the disbelieving shake of his head.

“What?” Charles grunted, hitting him lightly in the chest. “What are you laughing at?” Because he was laughing now, a sleepy, helpless sort of laughing fit, even though it was hardly funny.

“Going all the way to fucking _Maine_ for a _possibly_ haunted house when you’re sitting on a hotbed of fucking ghost activity right here.” Erik opened his eyes to get his point across, glad to find Charles looking back at him with interest. “This is what scientific discover needs, right? A place active enough to research long term. Well, in all the time you’ve been here the place has only gotten more fucking active. Now you’re going to Maine for a maybe. That’s what I’m laughing at.”

Charles' face didn't change, but Erik could still actually see the germination of the idea he’d planted behind the waves of the man's eyes, see his idea take root and crystallize into something solid.

But he didn’t celebrate, didn’t even feel the urge to celebrate anything, because he’d seen exactly how stubborn Charles could be when he wanted, and he wasn’t under the impression that just because Charles saw reason it necessarily meant he’d _listen_ to reason.

“Shut up now please,” Charles murmured, as if to prove his pessimistic point. But in the same breath he leaned close enough to kiss him seriously on the mouth. Erik wondered if this were simply to force him to do as he was asked, and feel asleep without coming to an answer.

* * *

He awoke with a start when he heard a door shut somewhere close by. He was groggy, confused, wasn’t sure how long he’d been out; he’d obviously been deep enough not to notice Charles climbing out from under him, because the man clearly wasn’t in bed anymore. And, looking around at the empty room, he realized he wasn’t anywhere else either.

Growling low with frustration, he dropped his head back onto the pillow. He considered strangling the soft thing in lieu of the agonizing man, but realized he didn’t have the energy and so just laid there, glaring at the room instead, damning it for its emptiness. He leaned up with something approaching a smile when he saw the note there.

_Erik—Now for that stiff drink! It’s probably illegal, but I borrowed your car. Be back soon. –Charles. PS, you snore. Very, very slightly, but you do. xoxo_

Laughing ruefully, Erik considered tossing the paper away to show his opinion of that last bit of teasing, but instead just stroked his fingertips over the sign off and rolled onto his back, stretching for a full minute before getting lazily out of bed.

 _What to text the man?_ he wondered as he pulled on a motel robe he was pretty sure didn’t come standard in most rooms, and went looking for his phone and charger in the mess of the room. Everything was littered all about, and not just his bag. It looked as if Charles picked his clothes by spreading them about the room first.

His phone lit up into a million alerts, somewhat bitterly, he thought, when he plugged it in. Mark, Emma, Mark, shit he’d have to call Mark back. Probably should not do it with Charles returning any minute. He had no clue how long Mark would keep him on the phone. Long enough to bitch him out for evasion, he was sure.

He quickly deleted Mark and Emma’s voicemails, finger hovering uncertainly over a local number he didn’t recognize, and then deleted that too. If he didn’t recognize it, it couldn’t be that important. Released from all responsibilities, he quickly texted Mark that he was alive but busy, then happily texted Charles’ number (as listed in Emma’s badly crumpled directions).

 _You do too,_ he sent, even though he didn’t know if it was true. He turned about wrathfully when he heard a chipper twittering going on under a pool of black hoodie.

Huffing with angry disbelief, he pulled Charles’ cell phone out, his own phone number accompanying his jaunty, wasted text. His annoyance quickly shifted onto another track, though. Underneath his own text was another. _Darwin_ , it said, and then, _Did the darling cool his jets yet? Alex went over the data. You were right. COLD spots!! Blow him off and come look! NOT LITERALLY. God haven’t you had enough yet? UGH._

Erik stared at the screen, at the bold _SLIDE TO UNLOCK_ at the bottom and knew that he shouldn’t, _knew_ that he definitely _should not_. _Well, maybe it needed a password_ , he mused, and swiped. It did not require a password.

 _Walked pretty far. At a lake. 1 mile?? House OK??_ Charles’ text appeared at the top of their conversation.

 _Still active!_ Darwin had written back. _Charles idk how else to explain it…I think the house is getting stronger!_

More texts followed, about bringing Kitty home, about utilizing Alex to fill in for Charles, but Erik stopped reading, turning the thing off and shoving it back under Charles’ hoodie, feeling jittery and overheated, as if he had a fever.

That’s what he got. That’s what he fucking got for snooping.

Leaving his phone to charge, he shifted through Charles’ strewn clothing, finding some clean underwear and an old tank top. It was fucking hot in here. He turned on the AC before he went to the bathroom to figure out how to work the motel shower.

Erik had never been a fan of motels in general and motel baths in particular. Maybe he was just too morbid, or pessimistic, but motel baths always seemed like the number one place someone would slit their wrists. Even when he managed to not think about that, it just felt awkward being naked in a place that hundreds or thousands of others had been naked in, and not the sexy kind of naked people either but pudgy, balding salesmen and scabies-riddled junkies.

Still, under the strong, scalding jets of the shower, he managed to forget about all of that. There was room now only for the massaging, muscle-deep blast of scalding water, the spewing of hot steam and relaxation. It even made up for the shitty hotel soap and shampoo.

The water was almost uncomfortably hot, but Erik didn’t turn it down any, rinsing suds out of his hair and then just standing there, feeling as if he couldn’t breathe in the humid intensity he’d created but not able to come up with the effort required to do anything about it. He could have reached out and turned on the fan he’d forgotten about when he first stepped in, but the knob on the opposite wall felt like it might as well be located on the summit of Everest. Instead, he just closed his eyes and reveled in it, the blasting water that drove out every other noise, every other feeling, until even worry, concern over the temperature or the air quality couldn’t reach him.

He opened his eyes and stepped back out of the thunderous water when he thought he heard someone in the other room. Yes, there was definitely a timbre there, although he couldn’t make out what was being said.

_Charles._

The man was teasing him most likely, asking where he’d got to or—no, the voice wasn’t loud enough to be calling out to him, had gone on too long to not be part of a conversation. Perhaps he’d found his phone, in which case Erik had to move fast to keep him from getting tempted to return to Darwin’s side. Surely that business about cold spots was meant to be exactly the sort of thing that would tempt the man.

Shutting the water off and drying quickly, wrapping the towel about his waist in a rush, Erik threw the door open, cutting the voice off immediately.

He stood, in an outpouring of steam, glancing about the empty room. Because the room _was_ empty. It wasn’t big enough for him to be mistaken about it, even though he unfolded the closet door and checked around the corner by the bed just to be sure. He _was_ sure. 

He would have brushed it off--he’d heard someone on the other side of the shower wall, in another room, maybe even on another floor, who knew? But the painful swelling in his chest, the cold prickling of his flesh, wouldn’t allow even the thought of a mistake. Seeping through the whole of it was the sick, queasy feeling that someone was watching him.

Slowly, hardly daring to move at all, he turned on his heels, feeling as if every movement were throwing out waves of disturbed air to his watcher, so that the merest twitch was noted and snapped up. His head was pounding until all he could hear was the thunder of his own heartbeat, the organ thrashing so hard in his chest it felt as if it would break out, as if it were breaking his ribs at every shudder.

In the fogged up, cloudy expanse of the mirror before him, he saw the rough shape of his own reflection, and knew in his bones that it was not him.

He stood as still as was possible, clamping down on the vibrations of his overactive heart, on the shivering of his own frame. He watched the outline in the mirror, the dark halo of hair, the pale expanse of skin, the white swatch of towel. It looked like him, was as still as him, but it was not him.

His brain felt hot and swollen in the cage of his skull, till he imagined it was pressing at the confines, threatening to explode its way out, the feeling only more noticeable on every rush of blood, till he couldn’t think, till he worked solely on a sort of animal instinct.

Slowly, so slowly his muscles ached with it, he creeped forward a step. The figure in the hazy smoke of mirror loomed slightly larger. His heart thrashed still faster, a frightened bird in the hand. Over the crash of his own bloodflow he realized he could again hear someone speaking, the voice low, more gravelly than Charles’ voice, with none of his soft caressed vowels and gentle consonants. Whether because of the noise of his own body or the inability of his own mind or some defect in the voice itself, he could only make out a word or two here and there. _Burn. Go._

He stepped forward again, hand shaking as it reached out in preparation to clear the fog. The figure in the mirror did the same, but Erik wasn’t fooled. His hand before him trembled in midair. Was he going to do it? Could he do it?

 _“Burn it,”_ the figure said, the slow breaking open of its mouth, the pursing of his own lips. “ _Go…”_

His fingertips stretched before him and lingered just above the murky water of the glass, needing to build up strength before he dared make a ripple.

He dropped it with a jump as a noise at the door interrupted him, and turned in time to see Charles shove his way inside with two shopping bags in one hand, his key card and a Big Burger bag in the other, his duffel bag over the crook of his elbow, and two bags of pink and white Circus Animals in his teeth.

Kicking the door shut behind him, he spit these onto the floor.

“I could get very used to this,” the man mused, and dropped all his bags in time to take Erik in his arms when he rushed to him.

“Oof!” the man huffed, grappling for a better grip, or maybe just for the sake of groping him. “That must have been one hot shower. You’re burning up. Here, here, you haven’t even properly dried off. Let me help you with that.” With a quick hand Charles stripped his towel from his waist, staying hip to hip as he scrubbed at Erik’s dripping hair, draping the thin fabric over his shoulders when he was satisfied and grinning at him the moment before his kissed him, slowly and very intimately.

“Did you get my note?” the man asked and Erik had to think before he could remember. He managed to nod, but Charles maybe didn’t see it, tutting at his chest.

“Uh oh, what’s this?” Charles murmured, caressing his breastbone. “I’ll have to be more careful with you. You bruise like an absolute peach.”

Erik frowned and looked down and sure enough there was a dark purple-blue mottling to be seen, a random pattern of bruised leopard spots only nearly forming a circle at the center of his chest.

“It doesn’t hurt,” he mumbled in his own confusion, palpating the patch himself. He felt it keenly, deep inside him, as if his heart had floated to the surface of his chest, but it didn’t exactly hurt.

“Then I won’t feel bad,” Charles grinned, and pushed him slowly backwards onto the bed.


	38. Chapter 38

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In this chapter: people talk too much. And Charles just goes ahead and proves that he can be just as fucked up as Erik when he wants to be/when a mean author like me scrambles his back story. Apparently I'm a big proponent of nurture taking over. Erik has a nice, peaceful childhood? He gets a stable, complacent mentality. Charles gets a mean, fucked up childhood? He gets a weird, fucked up mentality. Sorry, Charlie! I don't know why I like torturing all of you so much...

“You went back to the other room,” Erik realized as Charles dug through his duffel bag. He had not yet been informed what he was searching for, but was feeling uncharacteristically uncurious at the moment, bundled up in bed under over-starched sheets and one of those cheap fake-velvet beige blankets like his grandmother used to own that seemed so standard in hotel rooms. The position did have the added perk, though, of being intermingled with the dinner Charles had brought him. Burgers and fries from the best fast food burger joint in town (how had the man lucked into that?). The sodas and sweets meanwhile where obviously from some vending machine, probably the motel lobby.

“Hm?” the man asked distracted, digging with increasing fervency. “Oh, yes, I did... Damn! Where the hell…?”

“What?”

Charles sat up on his heels, frowning at his disemboweled bag with his hands on his hips. “Darwin said he put everything back in my bag, but my toiletries are missing…Ugh, Raven!” Despite having his sack of condoms and lube spirited away from him, the man still turned smug pretty quickly. “Oh well. She didn’t count on your boy scout sense of preparedness. Now where’d that last condom run off to?”

Erik just snuggled deeper into his over-stuffed pillow, snaking an arm out to grab some thick-cut french fries.

“I’m tired,” he explained, as if it were necessary to explain that.

“Oh, right,” Charles agreed, sounding a bit embarrassed at having expecting anything else from him. The brunet sidled up gently behind him, arm going around his waist. “I suppose I can let you get some rest before I ravage you again.”

Erik chuckled, tipping his head back and rubbing his skull against the other man’s before he stilled, breathing deeply.

Their moment was interrupted for a second when logic filtered into his mind enough to startle him with its discovery.

“You went to the other room,” he said again.

“So we’ve established.”

“You talked to Darwin?”

“Well it would have been rude not to as he was sitting right there. He feels awful by the way, about what happened…”

 _Ha_. "What did he…Did he…Did you tell him? About Maine?”

“What was I supposed to tell him about Maine?” Charles asked, but Erik knew that he knew exactly because the man got up, stealing a french fry before going and taking the ice bucket from the sink counter.

“You did,” said Erik.

“I’ll be right back,” Charles dodged. “Keep your hands off my burger, meanwhile.” And with a grin and wink he was gone and Erik let his smile widen giddily.

He had. He was sure he had. Otherwise why the wink? Otherwise why the stubborn refusal to mention it? Charles had been swayed by his arguments, and, unused to being swayed by other people’s arguments, was embarrassed.

Feeling more energetic, Erik sat up on his brace of pillows, tucked the covers around his hips, and took an obvious and demonstrative bite of Charles’ burger, putting it back just so in its takeout box.

* * *

“This feels almost blasphemous,” he huffed, letting Charles pour him a Styrofoam cup full of two hundred dollar Glenkenchie.

“Are atheists capable of feeling blasphemous?” Charles mused, pouring himself one as well, sitting cross legged with him in the cushy bed, although Erik thought it was a bit unfair that the man was so clothed, looking decidedly overdressed for the occasion in his borrowed jeans and T-shirt.

“When it comes to expensive Scotch we manage,” he intoned, and then nodded past their hedonistic buffet of junk food, canned soda, and alcohol to one last bag sitting on the unused dresser. “What’s in that one?”

“Oh!” Charles coughed on his first sip, leaving his drink balanced on the headboard and scrambling up. “I nearly forgot!”

Erik waited, thinking rather smugly that, between himself covered only partway in cheap bedding, the sugar, the carbs, and the Scotch, Charles was attempting to horde all his fantasies in one bed.

He was only further convinced when Charles unearthed his next prize.

“Ta-da!” the man beamed, proffering in his arms a glimmering, complete wooden chess set. Erik’s heart galloped inside his chest and set his drink aside, sitting forward eagerly, swallowing back a flood of saliva. He struggled to speak past his overwrought heart.

“Is that the Staunton Reykjavik II Tournament Series and Tiroir Combination Blood Rosewood and Boxwood chess set from the display case at Henry’s Hobbies?” he murmured low in his throat.

“Well, yes,” Charles admitted grudgingly. “But stop looking at it like that before I get jealous and have an impromptu bonfire.”

“Let’s both of us just cut out the middle men here,” Erik suggested, making grab-hands like a willful toddler. “You and Magnus go have fun, just leave that here with me.”

* * *

“Can I borrow some clothes?” he asked, setting up the chess set as Charles threw out their now-empty food boxes. Charles had insisted that food come before chess, but Erik suspected the suggestion had come less from a health standpoint and more from jealousy.

“Clothes? What on Earth do you need clothes for?”

“ _You’re_ wearing clothes,” Erik pointed out. “It seems a bit hedonistic to be the only naked one here.”

“Well, let’s fix that then,” Charles grinned, and pulled his shirt up over his head.

“Oh come on,” he groaned. “What are you trying to do to me? I can’t come again. I’m serious. I’m on the edge of death as it is.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” the man shrugged, wriggling out of his jeans and underwear in one.

Erik immediately buried his face in his pillow, nearly upsetting his chess pieces. “I’m serious. I’m not looking. I’m not.” He felt the man climb into bed on the other side of the game, but didn't look up again until Charles said, “Okay, okay, I’m covered, I’m well covered. Your own bloody fault for having the AC on this high. It’s a regular ice box in here.”

When he dared look, Charles had the blankets pulled up around his throat demurely, eyeing the chess board with a scheming glint.

“Is that better?” the man mused, corner of his mouth turning up a little sarcastically. “Is the sight of my naked body no longer a danger to your virtue?”

“You’re okay,” Erik grumbled back. “Now come on. You start.”

Erik didn’t know how much experience Charles had with the game, but it only took a couple of moves for him to find out.

“The Alekhine Defense?” he questioned.

“Very good,” Charles grinned back. “How did you ever get into chess, living back here?” Erik bristled a little at the 'back here', as if Avalon were the back of the pantry of the world, where Erik usually found stale chips or sugar free hot chocolate packets he was sure he'd never bought.

“Well,” he said, watching the board from a perch on his elbow. “I’ll admit it wasn’t exactly organic. My dad got me started on it when Boy Scouts got too annoying for him. He saw it as a nice quiet hobby that would get me out of the habit of practicing my knot-making abilities on his ties, shoelaces, and anything else I could get my hands on.”

Charles laughed aloud at this, and Erik couldn't help but smile at the bright happy lilt of it. How amazing that his life could return to joy, to the pleasantness of lying naked in bed with a man he liked playing a game he loved. 

“What about you? Or maybe chess is a standard pastime for rich kids? All playing polo and chess and water skiing?”

Charles glowered at him and grabbed his Styrofoam cup of ice off the headboard, waiting while Erik refilled it.

“My father was a chess man. He first taught it to me. The rest of the family rather looked down their nose at it. I think they’d preferred I practice rugby or something equally muscular, rather than chess.”

“Idiots, the lot of them,” Erik smiled at him. “The brain is a muscle, isn’t it?”

“Not actually,” Charles laughed back.

A sentiment, an encompassing idea, welled up within him, and there was a moment when he could have held it back if he’d wanted to, and he thought about it, thought about if he did want to. He knew it would be better if he did want to; Charles would appreciate it more and thus it would be better for Erik in return. But the opportunity to stop passed him by and he let it.

“We don’t always seem to belong with the family we’re born to. But it doesn’t mean we don’t belong with anyone.”

Charles looked up from the board, watching him with his wide blue eyes, scared; he could see that he was scared even though his face was flat, giving nothing away. Erik wasn't sure how he knew it so wholeheartedly. Yet despite his fear, the man stood his ground.

“I know. I know that.”

“Sometimes I wonder,” Erik murmured, but either Charles didn’t hear him or he pretended not to hear him.

“What was your mother like, before she died?” Charles asked while he was taking a sip of his Scotch and he coughed hard, throat burning like coals. He wondered if the man was asking because he was trying to throw him off his game, or in revenge for his past mutterings.

“Sorry,” The man blushed, trying to hold back his smile at Erik’s sputtering fit. “I am; I’m sorry.”

“Why are you asking?” he asked suspiciously. Charles just watched the board and shrugged.

“I don’t know. Curiosity, I guess. Don’t answer, really. I don’t know what I was thinking. Change the subject. What's the weather supposed to be like tomorrow?”

But this seemed so impersonal, and Erik could see the night stretched before them, neither of them broaching anything of meaning, just pleasantries and useless chit chat. Plus, if he put himself out there, perhaps Charles would feel the need to reciprocate. He wondered if that was why the man had tried to change the subject, because he'd realized the same thing.

“No, it’s okay,” he said, taking Charles’ knight. “I can talk about it.” Still, he needed a deep breath for it. In a town where everyone knew everyone else's business for generations, he’d never actually had someone ask who didn’t already know. “What do you want to know?”

Charles shrugged. “Did you two get along?”

This seemed such an understatement that Erik had to bite back a scoff, turning it into a sort of choking chuckle. “She was the best mother in the whole world, I’m sure of it. She was just…just a very kind, caring sort of person. She should have come to age in the 50s when her life’s goals would have been stylish. All she wanted was her husband and her children. I think it was her saddest day when she found out she’d only have one kid. She wanted a whole slew of them.”

“She could have adopted,” Charles pointed out.

Erik blushed, because it wasn’t PC, what he had to say.

“That wasn’t really the same, in her opinion. Just her opinion. She wanted her own kids. She was really much nicer than this makes her sound.”

“Anti-adoption and anti-doctors, sounds like an absolute peach,” Charles teased with a wink.

Erik laughed, too, shaking his head.

“I don’t know. Maybe I _do_ have a history of mental illness in my family." He’d meant it as a joke, but the possibility of the idea took hold and chilled him. “Maybe I _am_ going crazy. Maybe Darwin’s right. Maybe it’s all in my head.”

“And Kitty’s head? And all our heads—we all heard that recording, Erik.”

“Maybe I’m doing it. Poltergeist, or whatever, maybe there’s something in me…” He thought of the mirror, of the him-but-not-him staring back at him through the smoke. He thought of the bruises on his chest, unexplained but now somehow sinister.

“Hey,” Charles growled, pinning him with those sharp blue eyes. “I’m the paranormal expert, not you. You don’t see me telling you what’s a journalistic godsend and what’s not. Don’t try to convince me that a haunting is a poltergeist is a mental fit. Next you’ll be suggesting the whole thing comes down to bad digestion, or swamp gasses.”

“Maybe that’s exactly what it is,” Erik grinned just to annoy him, and it must have worked because the man immediately took his bishop. Brat.

 “What about you?”

“What _about_ me?”

“What was _your_ relationship like with your mom?”

He knew it was probably a little low of him, asking this when Azazel had all but painted it in the sky that they’d had an awful relationship, but Charles didn’t know he knew, and he wanted to hear it straight from the source. Who knew? Maybe Azazel had it all wrong.

Charles was quiet for a long time, staring at the board. He was worried the man wasn’t going to answer at all, and was about to decide whether to repeat the question or change the subject, when the brunet suddenly opened his mouth.

“I don’t suppose it’s what one would call a relationship whatsoever. My father died and she couldn’t get away from me fast enough. She moved to the family estate in America, I stayed at boarding school in England, and I was lucky to see her on a summer vacation. I think she begrudged me even that.”

Charles’ mouth quivered and shut and Erik asked, “Where was Raven?”

When his voice got back under control he answered that too, as if he’d opened a floodgate and was having a hard time closing it again, so that Erik wracked his brain for the hundred other questions he was curious about when it came to Charles.

“Raven was too young for school when Father died, and anyway she was adopted—she didn’t look anything like him. She escaped the exile. She lived in America with mother, though she always talks a great game of wanting to have changed places with me.” The last came off as a disgusted scoff before Charles clamped down on it, eyes gone wide.

“I’m sorry. I don’t know what I’m saying. I’ve never…I never…”

“Hey,” Erik murmured, reaching forward and rubbing the man’s shoulder. “It’s okay.”

The man was stiff under his grasp and only stiffened more with these words.

“I can’t imagine what about any of that sounded ‘okay’ to you.”

Erik felt struck, completely rebuffed, chilled to the core with the fear that he’d proven himself so inept at talking to Charles, and with the prospect that he would always be so inept. On an impulse, on barely more than a blind grasp, he gripped Charles’ hair, forcing him to look up from the stupid game.

“You’ve had a shit fucking life, there’s no doubt about it. But you don’t have to anymore. I could make you happy, Charles. Maybe even happy enough to make up for how unhappy you have been.”

Charles closed his eyes, brow taut, as if he were in pain, and Erik feared that’s exactly what he was in.

“I know that,” the man whispered. “I just don’t think I could do the same for you, and I’m very tired of failing to make people happy.”

“So you run away from even trying? Why? Because of a miserable mother? A psycho sister?”

“You have to admit,” Charles intoned. “I haven’t a very impressive track record.”

Erik just stroked his hair back. “You’ve just been playing out of your league, you overachiever. Trying to please unpleasable people; what were you thinking? Now, me? I’m easy. Play chess, drink good Scotch, and fuck each other blind every now and then—that’s all I ask.”

Charles laughed despite a tightness in his throat that made it come out sounding strained. “Oh, Erik. They weren’t unpleasable. My stepfather, my sister could please my mother just fine. Azazel more than pleases Raven. Don’t you see? It’s just me. _I’m_ what’s wrong, and if you don’t see it now you will soon, and I don’t want to be around for it. Get while the getting’s good, isn’t that the American saying?”

“We have another American saying,” Erik pointed out, careful to keep any growl or animosity out of his voice. “When you fall off the horse, you get back on again.”


	39. Chapter 39

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Can I just tell you all how much I heartily appreciate you keeping up with this thing and reading it and enjoying it when you do enjoy it? I know it's oversized and cumbersome, but the old dear means well, and I'm just so happy you guys stick with it! You're the best readers in the world and I adore you :)

The silence was prevailing, and he could tell the man was content in it, and felt terrified at interrupting it, but knew he had to, though he saved it right up until it couldn’t be helped any longer, yelping “Here!” just as they were about to pass his house.

The man jumped in surprise at his sudden outbreak, not understanding him. “Huh?” So he pointed at his house passing by, and the man understood, stopped.

“Oh, this is your place, huh?”

He nodded, checking his bag, making sure all was in place, nothing was left behind. His mother would be so disappointed if he lost a book somewhere.

“Your parents home?” the man asked, scowling at his house.

Another nod, fiddling with his scarf, wondering if would be rude to get out now.

“Humph,” the man said, scowling harder, and nodded for him to leave so he left, his feet slipping in the thin film of snow.

“Thank for the ride, sir,” he said, running to the gate and opening the latch.

“Humph,” the man grumbled again, and moved on his way. He frowned and followed the man’s scowl up to the roof just above the chimney, where no smoke was pouring forth. The sight was so strange, and yes, even so embarrassing, that he stopped in his tracks. It was cold out. To not have smoke...people would think they were too poor for coal, or else too lazy to get their own wood. Was something wrong with the fireplace? He started on again, jogging up and shouldering through the door. He'd help fix whatever was going on. 

“Mama, Papa, I’m home!” he called, but stopped again when no one called back. The smell of his house was stale, and cold, as if no one lived there, as if it were abandoned. The hearth was black and dead, with not even any smoke filtering out of it. Already his heart galloped inside his chest like some terrified and untamed horse.

“Mama?” but his words seemed to disappear into the stillness of the house, swallowed up. The palms of his hands were slick and chill in his own fireless home. There was a dull thud as his satchel fell off his shoulder and hit the ground.

Turning slowly, hair prickling at his neck, his throat suddenly closed and choked him.

There, in his own door-frame, was the rotting, rusted metal door.

His breath, wheezing in the cold air, was the only noise, but it seemed to blare in his ears. He began to shiver, uncontrollably, but despite this he managed to stumble a step forward.

Smoke, just a puff at first but then a sea of it, swarmed out from under the door, from between the seams. He covered his eyes, felt they were wet and wiped them, shaking, with a choked sob. “Mama?” He could hear someone on the other side. But wouldn’t his mother have answered him? “Mama, please, please, please.”

A wail, some small sad noise, seemed to reach him from the other side and he closed the distance suddenly and quickly, without really meaning to, hand on the knob. He yanked away from the gritty, leprous heat of it, because it _was_ hot, shockingly so. He couldn’t open that door. Not without seeing. Not without knowing what was on the other side; what the fuck was he thinking?

He backed away, smoke hot around his ankles where it continued to filter out from under the door, and blinked. Just above him, was a small round pane of glass, a peephole. He stared at it for a long time in shock: that hadn't been there a second ago...surely? Anyway, what did it matter? He wasn’t tall enough to reach it in any case. No, no of course he was, he was a grown man, wasn't he?

Holding his breath, gripping the rivets of the door, he pushed silently up onto his tiptoes, and peered inside.

It was dark, a shadowy, flickering darkness that spoke of fire somewhere, somewhere out of sight. There was movement in the smoke, a conscious, pacing movement that stopped just when he’d pinpointed it. He clamped his hand over his mouth, stoppering his gasp, suddenly plunged into the cold feeling of being watched. Two shards of light flashed fiery in the darkness—glasses, he realized. _Tall. Glasses._

The was soft, sinister chuckling, and straining his eyesight into the dark, he saw two pale shoulders shake with laughter and for once anger more than fear gripped him hot and overwhelming in his stomach.

“Max,” a soft, hissing voice rasped, and he was clenching his jaw so tightly his teeth ached. “What a pleasant surprise. So good to see you again.” His heart expanded, surged with _hate_ , until he could feel it, until it pushed at his breastbone like a sharp stone. The man inside stepped closer, closer to the door, the outline of a long, lean body in a white jacket, of well-combed, ashy hair. “Open the door, Max. Give me a proper hello. Open the door. Open it.”

Then a lunge and the man threw himself against the door, rattling it in its frame, black smoke billowing out of it and Erik jumped back even as something in him jumped forward, ready for the fight, pulling at him with a tearing heat, and when he looked down at the sharp ache in his chest it was because a hand was reaching out of him, the long, pale fingers, the sturdy palm, thin wrist, elbow.

“No!” he shouted as the hand reached the last bit forward and grabbed the doorknob, turned it with a wrench.

“No, no, no!” he screamed, tossing, fighting the tight, claustrophobic wrapping around him that kept him caught like a swaddling cloth, like a net. There was a sharp, blinding light and someone grabbed him, rolled on top of him, pinning him, wrestling him and he cried out, shocked, afraid, not understanding.

“Erik, calm down! Calm down! Erik!”

“The door,” he panted, blinking back into vision, fighting against Charles and losing. “The door, he’s at the door!”

Charles, looking shocked, just stared back at him, still pinning him by his shoulders although Erik had reclaimed his mind enough to realize it was better to stop struggling now.

As if on cue, someone knocked at the door.

The both of them stilled to where they could have been cut from stone. Charles moved first, glancing at the door, then back at Erik, and then he slipped off the bed, yanking off the fake-velvet blanket and wrapping it around himself as the rapping started again.

“What the fuck are you doing?” Erik yelped, voice probably high-pitched to the point where only dogs could hear it, his throat had closed up so tightly.

“Hush,” Charles hissed, throwing a silencing glare back at him. He turned back to the door, and Erik slid up the bed, clutching the sheets around his waist, headboard cold against his shoulders.

“Who’s there?” Charles demanded, voice strong and authoritative like Erik had hardly heard it. Some low, rasping voice replied, but Erik couldn’t make it out. Charles reached for the knob.

“Don’t open it!” Erik cried out.

Too late.

“Hi, Misser Zavier!” Alex beamed on the doorstep, and Charles deflated shakily against the door.

“Bloody hell, Alex, you scared us half to death! What were you thinking?!”

The boy quirked a brow at ‘us’, looked past his idol long enough to see Erik, who tugged at the sheets awkwardly under his surprised gaze, and blushed till he might die from it.

“Oh my god. Oh my god, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I saw the light on, and I was juss leaving an’ I thought—I thought, in case I didn’t see ya before ya left tomorrow…”

“It’s alright, Alex,” Charles sighed, good-natured now that the danger had passed. Erik couldn’t help but feel a little giddy with relief himself, despite the awkwardness of the situation. “But you’re getting out a little late, aren’t you?”

“Hank was showing me the Charchester files. It was great. He’s awesome.”

“I’m glad you think so,” Charles chuckled. “But you should get some sleep now.”

“Maybe,” Alex blurted, firmly avoiding Erik’s gaze and fidgeting on the chilly doorstep. “Maybe I could come out and say goodbye proper in the morning.”

Erik held his breath, waiting for the reply.

“I’m sure that’s not necessary, but if you want to spend breakfast with us, I certainly won’t stop you. You’ve been an absolute dear, Alex. I can’t tell you how much I’ve appreciated all your hard work with us today, honestly I can’t.”

“Aw,” Alex grumbled, blushing even more if that were possible, and looking as if he might hug Charles he was so honored. That seemed to make him realize Charles’ state, at last, standing there shifting from foot to foot in nothing but a cheap hotel blanket, the room behind him unruly and debauched, naked man in his bed. “Um, well…no problem. Don’t mention it. I just wanted to say…just in case I missed ya..goodnight. So: goodnight. I’ll let you get back ta…um...Goodnight.”

“Goodnight,” Charles smiled gently. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Erik’s heart buoyed at that, so that when Charles shut the door and collapsed against it, laughing back at him, he was able to laugh as well.

“God!” the man sighed, rubbing his face and then raking his gaze over Erik heatedly. “What a sight we must be, poor kid! This must be what those fundamentalists mean when they talk about unruly homosexuals converting their sons to a debauched lifestyle!”

Erik eased back against the headboard, feeling light, or maybe lightheaded. He looked at Charles, laughing, bare legs sticking out of his beige blanket.

“Come here,” he said, and Charles must have taken it for more of an invitation than it actually was, gravelly as it came out through pure tiredness, because when he did come over it was with an unmistakable glint in his eye.

Oh well. Erik found he didn’t mind that.

“I want you again,” Charles groaned, kissing his mouth and straddling his hips, letting the blanket drop away. “God, shouldn’t I stop wanting you at some point?”

“No,” Erik growled back, and corralled the energy to show him why not, kicking the sheets out of their way. It seemed his Boy Scout preparedness with the condoms was not going to go to waste tonight after all.

“Don’t, I’m fine,” the man gasped when Erik tried to stretch him out, spreading lotion over his straining cock.

“You’ll be sore,” Erik warned, even as he slid down the bed just enough to allow Charles to properly mount him, which he did slowly but with no hesitation.

“It’ll be something to remember you by,” the man teased, groaning as he slid down him to the hilt, sitting with his head tossed back, the long pale swath of him shining in the lamp light.

“Will that be necessary?” he asked even though he knew because Charles had told Alex he’d see him tomorrow.

Charles just smiled at him, kissed him, and started to move around and above him.

Erik wasn’t sure if it was the sleep-deprivation, or if the passion between them blazed exponentially each time it was lit, but the height, the fever-pitch of it all, seemed to come sooner; or maybe in the middle of the night it was just harder to gauge time. In any case, before too long, soon, everything was coming faster. The thrusts, Charles’ sharp, short gasps, Erik’s low, baritone groans, the clutching and panting and spiraling out of it all.

“Erik, Erik,” Charles gasped against his mouth, fingertips digging into his shoulders, and Erik’s hips lost their purposeful rhythm and he knew he was losing it. Before he did completely, he tossed over to his side, throwing Charles under him and diving back inside him, making the man twist and cry out under him, thrust again hard to make him cry out again.

“You’re not going anywhere,” he hissed, pounding to completion. Charles couldn’t speak, clutched him close, shook his head.

“No, no,” he choked, and his whole body tightened around him in a great gripping spasm and he came with a shout, Erik close behind.

* * *

He woke up slowly, lazily, with no impetus other than his internal clock telling him he’d slept enough. The room was quiet, an oasis of solitude; there seemed no reason to hurry, so he didn’t. Sunlight was fighting its way stubbornly through the thick curtains, a small rectangle of dim insistence on infiltrating their love nest. Charles was warm and unmoving in his arms, breathing slow and peaceful, still asleep. Closing his eyes, he pressed his face back into the soft, tickling hair at the base of the man’s head, strengthening his hold around Charles’ bare waist under the covers, shifting that much closer against his warm body. Charles took a deep, sleepy breath, ribs pressing against his arm, moved slightly in his sleep, but still didn't wake. Erik wondered what time it was, but didn’t want to sit up and check.

Still, they’d have to get up soon. Emma would kill him if he didn’t show up to work this morning. He didn’t think it was as late as all that yet. Despite the sunlight, it still felt early, maybe six or seven even. He could go back to sleep and enjoy this another hour or two. But on the other hand, if he did get up now it just meant spending more waking time with Charles rather than sleeping.

Breakfast. He could go get the man breakfast, something with lots of syrup, give him breakfast in bed. Charles would like that. He imagined the sleepy, grateful smile and smiled himself at the thought of it.

Kissing the man on the back of his neck, he slipped out of bed, pressing the covers back against the space he’d vacated so Charles wouldn’t chill. The dim sunlight was enough to rummage by, and Erik silently found a pair of underwear and an old T-shirt of Charles’, as well as a scratchy wool cardigan that would protect him against the morning chill. He pulled on his own discarded jeans, found one Keds and was searching for the second when a low, groggy voice intoned behind him: “Sneaking out, are you?”

He turned and Charles had moved onto his stomach, blinking groggily at him over the curve of his shoulder, only half-awake if anything. “Don’t worry. I’m well used to it.”

“Shut the hell up,” Erik whispered back, climbing beside him over the covers and kissing his cheek. “And me off to get you some sugary breakfast. Some thanks!”

Charles was too tired to think of a response to that. It had been a long night, after all. He just closed his eyes again and grunted a sort of understanding.

“Get back in bed,” he mumbled, apparently falling back asleep, and Erik smiled, holding him through the covers.

“How will you get pancakes then?”

“I don’t care. I’m just not ready for you to get out of my bed yet.”

“I’ll be right back,” he grinned, nuzzling into the man’s hair. Charles struggled one hand out of the blankets and caressed his cheek, fiddling with his burgeoning stubble.

“Did you have any more bad dreams?” the man asked.

Last night came back to him then: the door, the man—he pushed it away with a shudder and shook his head.

“That’s good. It seemed a bad one.”

“Hmm,” Erik grunted, rubbing his breastbone, trying to not remember the arm that had last been reaching out of it.

Turning his head, Charles caught his lips, kissing him lazily but cheerfully. “Now get back in bed, and let’s try our luck again.”

Laughing, Erik pushed up, kissing Charles once more on his brow, found his spare shoe and grabbed his wallet.

“Should I ask them for one gallon of syrup or two for your pancakes?” he teased at the threshold. Charles pulled the covers back over his shoulder and rebundled himself deep in the bed.

“Ask them for an antidote to that smart mouth of yours.”


	40. Chapter 40

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Have I mentioned lately that I love you all? I know I'm not the fastest or most concise of authors, but can I just say I really appreciate all the love you give this oversized monolith of mine? Thank you for reading, thank you for reviewing, thank you for any good thoughts you send my way. As much work as this thing requires, as much time and worry and pulling-of-hair it takes, you guys make it all worth it.

The morning sun was shimmering warmly in an absolutely spotless sky—it was going to be a summer day to write home about, and Erik found himself whistling happily to himself as he skipped down the stairs, starting with random bars and ending up with _This Magic Moment._ Things were finally, at last, despite all ominous beginnings, going his way. Charles had not so much as glanced at the clock. He hadn’t checked his phone, he hadn’t set his alarm, he hadn’t requested a wake-up call. If the man still had any plans to run off out of town like a skittish stray, surely he wouldn’t have taken such a leisurely morning about it. That, coupled with everything that had happened last night, cemented his hope. Even though it was still early, even though his luck had been shit enough as of late, he couldn’t help but trust it.  

And having won one argument only made him trust all the more his chances of winning the second. If he could convince Charles to stay in town then he was already halfway to convincing the man to date him. The fight was already half fought, half won.

His happiness was so expansive, so heavy and confined in his heart he almost had to run back upstairs to expend it all on Charles again, but he scrounged up some willpower and kept to task.

Distracted as he was, half in another world, a world of bright sun and brunets in debauched beds, he had to do a double-take when reality assaulted him on the doorstep of the diner.

A quick glance at the clock behind the packed breakfast bar told him he wasn’t wrong; despite the crush of people it was indeed as early as he believed, was barely past eight. When the jabbering crowd hushed and perked up at his entrance only to then settle back grumbling and glum, he figured he could guess what they were all milling about for. Whoever hadn’t gotten a chance to witness Charles so far were going to make damned sure they made it happen before he left. They, after all, didn’t know he wasn’t leaving. Didn’t know he was at this very moment snuggled up naked in Erik’s bed. He grinned happily with this thought, but it fell off his face when he recognized a face in the crowd.

Four faces, actually.

Darwin and Hank stared at him first off from one side of their diner booth, and in a moment Sean and Alex had turned around to see what everyone was looking at, Alex waving eagerly at him, not looking any the worse for wear after his late night last night, and showing no sign of even remembering their midnight meeting. It was instead Darwin and Hank’s serious head-to-toe scrutiny that made him blush. He realized quickly what they were staring at: he was wearing Charles’ shirt and Charles’ cardigan and this was apparently not lost on either of them. Well, at least Raven and Azazel weren’t around to put their noses in it as well.

With a tightening of his mouth, he stalked to the bar and ignored the overworked waitress in preference of the bandy fry cook. The joys of a small town where everyone knew everyone. Or, in this instance, had been one’s high school history teacher.

“Couple orders of pancakes, Mr. Hedricks? Indecent amount of syrup?”

The man looked up at him over the edge of his slipping glasses, chef’s hat looking pristine and very official even though Erik and everyone else in town knew he’d bought it himself, and for no required purpose. Despite the fun the man apparently had with his summer job, though, he couldn’t help but mixing in his usual fare. “That depen’s. When was the Bay of Pigs?”

Luckily, Erik had always been very good at history. “1961.”

“Too easy. If it’s really all that extra syrup yer wantin’ you can be more sp’cific than that.”

“Um…April.” He was pretty sure it was April, and Hedrick’s proud grin told him he’d guessed right.

“Okay, okay. But if you expeck utensulls then you can give me the dates.”

“A to go box will do fine for me.”

“Spoilsport!”

He would have probably been quizzed further, Mr. Hedricks was one for quizzes, but he was interrupted.

“Mr. Lensherr,” Darwin murmured low, sidling up beside him at the counter and blasting any carefree banter straight out of his purview. “I was hoping for a word.”

Erik clenched his jaw and only kept quiet only because he was thinking of all the catty things he was going to say to the man. Darwin had continued on before he could settle on just one.

“I wanted to apologize. For yesterday. I shouldn’t have provoked you like that, I shouldn’t have showed you up when you were obviously going through a lot just then. I’m sorry. I don’t…I don’t know what got into me. But,” Of course there was a ‘but’, Darwin couldn’t just leave it at that, there had to be a ‘but’. “Shit, maybe it’s just that we started off on the wrong foot. I don’t know if you just don’t like me, or if you thought something was going on, me and Charles, and that’s why you were so hostile.”

Erik turned to him, bristling like a startled dog— _him! hostile!—_ but Darwin was refusing to be distracted, not looking at him.

“Maybe I was hostile too, I don’t know. There’s something about Charles that just breeds loyalty, protectiveness. Maybe I was being protective. Hell, I know I was being protective. The guy couldn’t be dragged away from his work with a horse tranquilizer and a wheelbarrow, and yet when we arrive: Charles nowhere in sight, saying he’s busy babysitting, condoms strewn all over the bathroom—what am I supposed to think? Well, that’s not so bad. He’s a shit judge of character, but his mistakes don’t tend to stick around for long. But then there you are in the morning, and no sign of running for the hills, and on top of it all—a _reporter_! A goddamned _reporter!_ Of all the people to sleep with, he lands some backwater muckraker looking for his next big break—“

“You don’t know anything about me!” he snarled.

Darwin broke his hypnotic gaze with the wall and blinked at him, cheeks darkening.

“Of course. I’m sorry. Vivid imagination. You’re right, I don’t know you. You could be a really great guy, despite all the evidence to the contrary. There’s a first time for everything. Even a broken clock gets it right twice a day, right?” _What the hell?_ Was the man insulting him and calling Charles a broken clock of all things all at the same time? He really didn’t mess around when it came to insulting people, he just got it all in at once.

Apparently happy with the number of potshots he’d gotten in, Darwin blinked himself back into the present, straightened up and shook himself out. “That’s all I wanted to say. I just wanted to explain, before we left. I didn’t want us parting ways with bad blood.” With a deep breath, he pushed himself away from the counter. “Anyway. Your breakfast is ready. I’ll leave you to it. If you see Charles, and by the amount of extra syrup you’ve got there I’m guessing you will, tell him he’s got to be packed up by nine. We need to get on the road before 9:30 if we’re going to make it to Maine for dinner.”

Erik’s hand stilled where it had rushed towards the takeaway boxes and escape. He gripped the bar for stability, and looked at Darwin.

“What?”

Darwin was surprised, perhaps at hearing him speak for the first time this morning, or maybe due to the audible alarm in his tone.

“…I said…”

“I heard what you said. What did you mean? What do you _mean_ Charles has to…Charles…didn’t Charles talk to you last night?” He suspected the last bit came out a little faint, but Darwin seemed to hear him, even over the clanking, babbling, guffawing breakfast crowd, now somehow incredibly crude, indecent in this, his hour of shock and dismay.

“Last night? I mean…of course, but I don’t see what that has to do with…”

“He didn’t talk to you about Maine?”

“Maine? What would he have told me about Maine?”

Erik was too struck to put it into words just then, feeling wobbly, ears ringing, mouth suddenly dry, impossible to swallow.

“What the hell did he talk to you about if _not_ Maine?”

“Well, he asked what we wanted for dinner. He asked if Sean had gotten Miss Frost’s visit mapped, asked if we could get it printed at the front desk. He asked if Raven had started on the book plate. Normal work stuff. Why? What was he supposed to have talked to me about?”

But Erik didn’t answer, _couldn’t_ answer. He just tossed some bills down on the counter blindly, fingers numb, grabbed his food, and left without another word, stumbling up the concrete stairs, sun cold on his shoulders.

* * *

Charles was still in bed, still not looking as if he were in any rush, still not looking as if he had any plans to even get dressed that day. He was lying cozily on a slew of pillows, covers up around his bare chest, watching staticky Sesame Street.

“New game,” he announced when Erik stumbled in. “Every time they say the word of the day, we fuck.”

“I hope you’re quick then,” Erik found himself replying. “Because Darwin says you’ve got to be on the road by 9:30.”

His voice, though it seemed far off, sounded bitter, sounded more than bitter but incensed, and he wasn’t the only one who apparently thought so.

Charles stared at him, wide-eyed with surprise for a moment, and then slowly switched off the TV. The sudden silence was tentative and hurt, on both their parts.

“You’re upset,” Charles said finally, voice small though determined, as if he’d taken that time to try and make it come out strong and had only found out upon speaking that that wasn’t going to happen.

“I’m upset,” Erik agreed, tossing the breakfast, the packaged plastic utensils, onto the bed and then realizing he was too pent up to follow suit, pacing instead. Charles sat up slightly against his pillow horde, apparently also gearing for a fight.

“You’ve no right to be,” the man claimed, completely incongruously sounding as if _he_ were the injured party here. “I never said I’d stay with you.”

“ _You let me think it!”_ Erik snarled back, snapping Charles into silence with the violence of it. He took a deep breath, settled himself. “That you even just said that proves you let me think it. Why?” Charles had the decency to look chagrined then, mouth tugging downwards in a way that made Erik wish they could end this fight now, before it progressed any farther, that Charles would simply give in and make fighting superfluous. “Why lie to me?”

“I didn’t lie,” Charles insisted, but he didn’t sound completely sure of himself now. “I didn’t. I just…I just didn’t explicitly state…I didn’t want to get into it. I didn’t want to argue. I’d made my point and you’d made yours and I just didn’t see the point in either of us beleaguering it. Why waste our last night arguing? Why waste our last morning? We have time together, Erik, if not much of it. Sit down. Lie down with me. Let’s enjoy it.”

Erik could have railed, could have stamped and screamed and argued anew. There were plenty of arguments available to him, after all: this didn’t _have_ to be their last night together, their last morning, their last hour; Charles had a duty to remain, if not for him then for his research, for the long-lasting research Charles claimed he was after. There was no reason for Charles to leave except that he was scared, scared of what they could be, and that was absolutely maddening.

But nothing came.

Maybe it was simply exhaustion—he had actually been through a lot lately. Or maybe it was looking into those hard blue eyes, harder than he remembered, and realizing that Charles’ was a will that would not be crushed easily, would not be swayed to his side even by reason when he refused to see reason. There was a gulf between them, and even if Erik tried to throw a rope across Charles would only kick it away. He didn’t want to be convinced, that’s why he wouldn’t risk Erik attempting to be convincing. Charles would either give in of his own free will or he wouldn’t, and there was nothing for Erik to do but stand by him and wait, or else walk away.

“What is it?” Charles questioned with not a little shock, maybe even concern, when Erik climbed into bed beside him, closing his eyes against the stiff sheets, not shifting although the covers were bunched up almost painfully under his chest.

“Nothing,” Erik murmured back. “Only, I’m very tired. And maybe I’m realizing I’m not as smart as I thought I was. I can’t think of anything else to get you to stay that I haven’t already said, except that I want you to stay, and I wish that you would, under any pretense. Because there’s a house here that needs attention, or a promise to keep, or a man who enjoys your company and isn’t ready to lose it just yet. I just don’t want to feel you slip away.”

“Erik,” Charles sighed, turning onto his hip and running his fingertips through Erik’s hair. He moved his head against the man’s fingers and found it a little hard to breathe normally; his chest hurt, his heart hurt. “I’ll keep my promise. I’ll still get to the bottom of this for you. I’ll still figure out what’s going on at that house, I swear it.”

“I don’t care,” Erik said, although it was oddly hard to say. “It doesn’t matter.”

Charles was quiet for a moment, his hand still, and then rejoined, falsely chipper. “You just need a good meal and a good night’s sleep. I was hoping last night would give you some perspective, but I guess we didn’t end up sleeping much. Here, this breakfast smells wonderful; have some, you’ll feel loads better.” _You’ll hardly notice me going,_ seemed to be what he was driving at. _Just hunger and sleep deprivation, that’s all that’s making you think you like me, want me around, want to keep me._

He could have been passive-aggressive; he could have been just aggressive; he could have picked out something very choice and bitter to say to Charles just then, but it felt as if it would be self-destructive on top of useless. Why bother? And why leave a bad taste in his own mouth at their parting just to spite Charles?

“You go ahead,” he opened his eyes to smile rather painfully, patting Charles’ hand. “I’m not hungry just now.”

Erik hadn’t thought he was so tired, or maybe his tiredness had only just hit him now, with the realization that--although he was in bed with Charles now--tonight, and tomorrow night, and the next one, he’d be alone again. He’d go to work, he’d see Mark, he’d write an article, his life would return to normal. He hadn’t thought that realization would drain him so. But it did; and so while Charles ate silently, he rested, felt sleep pull at him, at his sense of time and his sense of his self and at his own bitter edges.

Still, he got the feeling he hadn’t been resting long when Charles shoved his food aside onto the nightstand with a muttered, “It’s too much.” He was going to ask what the man meant, just as soon as he’d blinked himself into enough consciousness to manage it, but stopped trying when Charles turned and sidled up right against him, separated only thinly by the covers, pushing his face against Erik’s bicep, wrapping his arm around Erik’s waist.

Slowly, but with his all his heart, Erik turned, taking the man in his arms as well, and holding them chest to chest, the man’s breath hot on his collar, his eyelashes brushing his throat. Would it really be months until he felt that again? And what version of the man would return with the film crew, if even that ever came through? One who knew Erik’s ploys, had strengthened his already prodigious defenses? Erik had the fearful idea that he’d taken Charles by surprise this time around, and had only gotten so close on that element of surprise. What would he use next time and would it be nearly as successful?

“Did Darwin really say nine thirty?” the man mumbled through his shirt, and when Erik said "Yes," Charles’ arm tightened almost painfully around him.

“I thought I’d be ready,” Charles explained. “Last night…even this morning…saying goodbye just seemed so far off, like nothing I needed to dread just then. I thought I’d be ready for it when it came, when it came down to it. I thought my courage would hold its own.”

Erik tightened his grasp in response. “I’ll miss you, too.”


	41. Chapter 41

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope all of you (from the States) had a great Thanksgiving! This took longer than usual to post because I'm still technically in a food coma. Thanks for reading all you dears :)

Neither of them spoke, and while the silence was sad because it was, in its own way, a goodbye, it wasn’t unnerving. With Charles fingertips tracing labyrinths across his back, eyelashes catching slowly at his throat every now and then, it didn’t seem as if ‘unnerving’ could exist in the world. Yet the sentiment snuck its way in, like smoke seeping through the seams of a door.

Soon, sooner than he would be ready for, Darwin or Hank or Raven would come knocking at the door, and there was no way to put them off. This bitter taste in his mouth was defeat, and there was nothing to wash it out with—even kissing Charles, the sweetest taste he knew, would only add to it. Soon Charles would pull away from him and get dressed and cover up the marks Erik had put on him. Erik would collect his phone and papers and satchel, would go to work and sit at his desk as if the last few days had never happened. They’d have to say goodbye, and Erik doubted anyone would offer them the opportunity to do it alone. He should probably use _this_ time to do it, he realized, if he didn’t want awkward words or kisses or, hell, maybe even some last-minute groping, to be scrutinized by everyone and their mother, but somehow it never happened. Instead he found himself just closing his eyes against Charles’ hair and trying to will away the seeping sense of dread. At least he’d gain some time once he reminded Charles his muddy clothes and shoes were still at Erik’s. Surely the man would want to ride back with him and get them, and he could milk that for a bit, could put off the inevitable, even though Emma might flay him alive once he finally got into the office. Then again, with his luck, Charles might be just as likely to tell him to throw them out. He was apparently rich, after all. Surely he could afford to leave clothes like souvenirs for all his transient and short-lived bed partners, all over the country.

“How many men have you done this to?” he questioned suddenly.

“What?” Charles mumbled, sounding half-asleep. How could the man be so comfortable on the cusp of their separation? Comfortable enough to nearly fall asleep in the middle of this disaster?

“This. Sweeping into people’s lives and roaring back out again before they’ve gotten their head back on straight--long before they’re ready for it.”

Charles was quiet for a moment, but based on his tone of voice when he spoke, Erik thought it had been bred more of confusion than feeling affronted. “I’m not sure. I think you’re the only person who hasn’t been ready for it.”

Any argument to that, any opinion as to its impossibility, was cut off by a knock to the door. At the same time, a voice easily, aggravatingly recognizable as Darwin’s called, “Charles! You almost ready?”

They were still for a long moment, like a couple of small, wild creatures at the unexpected noise they knew belonged to a predator. Charles stiffened in his arms, and pulled back enough for Erik to suspect the man was looking at him, but he kept his own eyes stubbornly closed. He didn't want to see the man walk away from him.

“Erik,” Charles said, and it seemed, if not scared, then at least not quite prepared. Erik couldn’t even feel warmed that Charles wasn’t any more ready for this than he was: whether he was ready for it or not, Charles was just masochistic enough to go through with it anyway.

Sure enough, Charles pulled determinedly away from him, and Erik wondered if he shouldn’t open his eyes then, just to get one last peek at him, but he remembered that it would only be to see Charles covering his nakedness.

“One second!” the man called as Darwin knocked again. Erik realized he didn’t want Darwin to see him like this when Charles let him in, so he forced himself up, scooting to the edge of the bed to sit with his elbows digging into his knees.

“That’s my shirt,” he pointed out as Charles scooped up yesterday’s black button-up from the ground, coupling it with the dark tweed pants he’d already pulled on. 

“And that’s mine,” Charles grumbled back, nodding to Erik’s own stolen clothes. Charles followed his argument up with the best closer Erik had experienced: the brunet grabbed him by the back of the head, tilted his face up, and kissed him soundly. Erik didn’t so much care for the ending, though, as Charles turned and left, stamping out still barefoot but otherwise perfectly ready to leave him.

Charles didn’t shut the door all the way to avoid locking himself out, and Erik could hear the timbre but not the particulars of their voices: Darwin’s, chipper and bright, Charles’ low, more subdued, the soft, rolling cadences of it that Erik felt sure wouldn’t translate perfectly across hundreds of miles of telephone line. The room, somehow, seemed _more_ of a mess without Charles in it. Erik rubbed his skull and looked at the contents of his satchel where Charles had strewn things about last night, and gave one heavy, resigned sigh before standing to put it back together again. Notebooks, pens, old receipts—he put it all away slowly, grudgingly, grabbing his phone and charger from the wall.

The phone immediately chirped, happy to be of service again. New text, new email, _what the exact hell_ 33 new messages. Erik blinked at his phone for a second, inactive from shock, his brain only informing him that he didn’t recognize the number before it was promptly distracted by what was almost certainly a raising of voices outside.

Sitting up on his heels, Erik glared at the door, setting his phone back down. Why the hell would they be raising their voices? What the hell did _they_ have to get upset about? _He_ was the one getting jipped here. If anyone had cause to raise their voice, it was him.

Despite living with a roommate in college, and having his fair share of awkward morning-afters, Erik had not sneaked anyplace in a long time, possibly since his average crafty childhood. He was glad to see it was a skill that wasn’t dampened with the passing of time. When he was sidled up just to the crack in the door, neither Charles nor Darwin showed any signs of knowing he was there. Maybe that spoke more to the heat of their argument than any skill of Erik’s, though.

“Keep your voice down,” Charles hissed quietly, and part of Darwin’s response was cut off by a door closing somewhere on their level.

All he caught was, “—understand.”

“All I’m saying is, it just doesn’t make much sense,” Charles replied.

“You’re right,” Darwin agreed, and although his volume was apparently back under control, he still sounded absolutely flabbergasted. “It doesn’t!” Erik thought the two men had different subjects for their pronouns. But all thought was put on hold, was blasted out of fucking existence when Charles’ rebuttal shot into his brain and exploded there.

“I only mean to say, why would I go to Maine when I have a perfectly active ghost house here to investigate, Darwin? This is what we want, isn’t it? A venue to prove scientifically and without a doubt that ghosts exist. We can finally do that here.”

It seemed as if his ears should have shut down under assault of too much good input, but somehow they resisted the temptation to short out. Even his brain, which should have counted itself lucky at hearing what it had, was already greedily moving on to the next bit, bubbling happily with the hope of Charles suddenly blurting, “Also while I’m at it, I would like to date Erik forever because he’s amazing and I have no traumatic history to prevent us from living happily ever after.” That’s not exactly what he ended up hearing, but it was a fun thought while it lasted.  

“But…What about the show?” Darwin asked.

“What about it?” Charles countered, sounding anxious but determined, _stubborn_. Erik liked that sound. He got the feeling that, uncertain as Charles felt about his fresh stance, he was still going to fight for it till the bitter end. Erik had experienced just how stubborn Charles could be when he didn’t want to be otherwise, and stiffened his whole body to prevent himself from breaking into a spontaneous jig. “The producers are not asking us to go to Maine--they’re not asking us to go anywhere until they’re ready to film. Our preliminary investigations have always been about satisfying our own curiosity rather than following a job description. Whether we find something in Maine or not they still have final say; they always have. So why bother?”

“I can’t believe I’m hearing this from you!”

“Why on Earth not?” Charles asked defensively. “We’ve been searching all this time for a place that’s active enough and prolonged enough to research deeply--get sure evidence, do re-creatable experiments, write a real scientific study for a real scientific journal! That’s all we’ve ever been after and now we’ve found it! And you want to abandon it for a frankly questionable report in Maine? Honestly, Darwin, why? If you’re not working on the penultimate motive of verifiable research then what motive are you working on?”

“Do not turn this on me, Charles,” Darwin warned in a low tone.

“You can’t want to go to Maine for research because we’re already sitting on the more viable research. If you weren’t so busy feuding with Erik then you’d see that!”

“Feuding! Well if you weren’t so busy _fucking_  Erik you’d see that we have obligations! Damn it, Charles, you’re the one who promised those people in Maine we’d investigate, not me!”

“Then I can un-promise, can’t I.”

“For fuck’s sake, Charles, can you _hear_ yourself?”

“Yes, I can bloody well hear myself, all right! Listen…listen, I’m not saying we tell the Bishops in Maine to go fuck themselves. It doesn’t take four of us to investigate. Maybe it won’t go as fast as usual, but it’s not like there’s anyone waiting with bated breath for our results in any case.”

“What are you saying? We split up? Some of us go to Maine and some of us stay here to finish with the Ash Creek House?”

“Exactly!” Charles exclaimed with something approaching excitement.

“Fine,” Darwin said, and Erik did jump for joy then, but only fit in one before the man finished with, “Me and Sean will finish up here. You and Hank go and see to Maine.”

There was a long silence in which Charles’ mind had apparently gone as still and horrified as his own.

Erik could only count the time in stilted heartbeats until Charles said, voice very low, and very firm, “No, Darwin.”

Erik turned away from the door then, he had to, he couldn’t contain it any more. Luckily he made it all the way to the bathroom, shutting the door solidly behind him, before he laughed out loud, shaking the towel rack because even laughing wasn’t releasing all this pressurized happiness inside of him.

It didn’t matter how persuasive Darwin was now. Charles’ mind was already made up, his decision was already concreted in place and nothing would chisel it loose now. Charles had already overcome the first, the biggest, the hardest hurdle. He’d said, out loud and to another human, to Darwin, to any member of his team, that he wanted to stay. Wanted to stay for his own personal reasons, that had nothing to do with research, because if it were just research he would have just let Darwin take it. Nothing Darwin came up with was going to be harder to get over than that. If Charles could overcome that he could overcome anything.

Erik about lunged out of the bathroom when he heard the door creak open again, and then struggled to school himself so he wouldn’t appear too eager. Charles, leaning back on the door with a folder held protectively to his chest, didn’t look as if he’d appreciate eagerness right now. Indeed, he looked as if he might throw up.

“What happened?” Erik asked, exactly as if he didn’t know.

Charles stared back at him, eyes narrowed for a moment as if he suspected, but he apparently decided against it finally, rubbing his brow, hand not quite steady.

“What happened?” he repeated in a murmur. “God, what happened?” But with a gulp and an attempt to wet his lips, the man straightened up, pushing off the door. “There’s been a change of plans,” he said strongly. “I…The team is going on the Maine, as we discussed. I…I’m going to stay here.”

Erik had to bite his cheek to keep from beaming out of his goddamned mind at that, and he mostly succeeded he thought. He nodded solemnly until he was sure his voice would come out steady.

“You and who?”

“Me and…Alex.”

Erik couldn’t help himself then—he was too shocked and pleased by the news to school himself in time. Alone! He and Charles, left here in Avalon practically fucking alone! No fighting Darwin for him, no fighting anyone! Charles glared at his irresistible grin.

“Stop that! It’s just a matter of research. I just couldn’t manage to leave the house like that, half-finished, when it finally came down to it. I thought I could, but I couldn’t. It’s got nothing to do with you!”

Erik could have cracked that argument violently right then and there, just by asking why _Darwin_ wasn’t staying to do the research and _Charles_ wasn’t going off to Maine. By asking why Charles had chosen to not keep _any_ of his babysitters alongside him, why he’d decided to keep _Alex_ of all people rather than someone with actual experience to collect data. Erik already knew the answer to that, at least: Alex wasn’t likely to either contradict him or tattle on him. Charles was finally shaking off his shackles. Why bother doing that if he was going to be a good little boy and keep focused solely on research? No, this level of willfulness spoke of fun in their future. But surely Charles would only see it as a challenge if Erik pointed it out, and Erik had no interest in losing out on fun just because he’d forced Charles to prove a point. 

“Of course,” Erik said demurely with a nod, but he couldn’t keep himself from smiling.

Rolling his eyes, Charles turned away with a huff, tossing the folder on the table to rifle through.

His voice, when he spoke, was almost militant.

“I’ve got a lot of work. And so have you. I’ve got to go soon.”

“Go? Go where?” Erik balked.

“Well, if I’m going to be staying here then I’m going to need a car. Alex says there’s a place the next town over he can bring me to.”

“I can bring you,” he said, and he wanted to brush Charles’ hair back over his ear but he didn’t want to overplay his hand.

“I seriously doubt Miss Frost would allow that,” the man intoned, still looking at his papers. Erik laid his hand over top them, breaking his gaze, and a stiffness set into Charles’ jaw so he knew he definitely did not appreciate the move, but didn’t pull his hand back in any case.

“If you can shake off your babysitters then so can I,” he grinned.

If possible, the man went even stiffer.

“If that’s what you think this is going to be like, then tell me now,” Charles said in a very still voice that made Erik want to shiver if he’d dared to move. “Darwin hasn’t left yet. There’s still time for me to join them.”

Erik’s mouth dropped open with a wet, shocked sound, but he couldn't manage to say anything. Charles turned to him in his silence, eyes hard, even dangerously so, and he continued.

 “I do have work to do, Erik, and I am going to get it done. Darwin might think lust has overtaken my brain to the point where I could forget my work completely, walk blindly into some hedonistic miniature honeymoon with you—perhaps you think it too. That the team will drive off and you and I—we’ll fall in together like a couple of lust-struck teenagers, not beholden to anyone or anything but our own rampant desires. I’m here to tell you it’s a fantasy. I like you. I can’t deny it, not after this, so I won’t try. But that does not mean I’ll give up my life’s work for you. I’m going to get to the bottom of this house, and you, you’re going to _help_ me, not _hinder_ me.”

“Help you?” Erik balked, immediately surprised that, of all the things he’d just been told, that was the part that struck him.

“Yes,” Charles nodded, pulling the papers out from under Erik’s hand where it was still resting. “These are the temperature readings for the house. See here, this page? This is when you were locked in the stairwell. Do you see this? This is a temperature _spike_. And this page, do you see this one? This is when Emma was at the house. She said, ‘Excuse me, darlings,’ and she went into the upstairs bathroom. The rest of the group, the photographer and the lot, continued their tour. First they went into the old nursery, then the study. You see this here? This is a temperature _drop._ That first night? In that same bathroom? Temperature _drop._ ”

“There wasn’t a thermometer in that bathroom,” Erik managed to say, mouth dry.

“Closet. Close enough to capture it, apparently, because it did."

"So? Heat spike, heat drop, what does it matter?"

"That's what I need your help to figure out. What happened to Emma in that bathroom? What did she see?”

Erik didn’t say that she might not have seen anything. He’d seen her yesterday, he’d talked to her. He _knew_ she’d seen something.

“She’s not going to tell me,” he balked instead. “I’m the last person she’d tell!”

“Don't be melodramatic. I think she’s got a whole slew of people she’d tell you before.”

Erik frowned, but it was quickly overtaken with a smile. He let himself push Charles’ hair back behind his ear, grinning when those blue eyes turned to him, narrow and suspicious.

“What do I get if I do?”

Charles blushed, looked away, but Erik thought he detected a hint of a smile. He certainly didn’t miss the low, gravelly tone to the man’s voice when he said, “What do you want?”

Erik smiled and slid closer, nuzzling gently against Charles’ temple, his hair scratching Erik’s brow, slid his hand over the angles of Charles’ shoulders, down the valley of his spine, to his round, warm ass, palming it heavily. He could feel Charles’ smile against his jaw as the man turned into him.

“Have dinner with me tonight.”

“Only dinner?” Charles mused, shifting deliciously under his grip. Whatever the man said about this not being a teenage honeymoon, Erik had no delusions that they wouldn’t be able to find some hedonistic reprieve here and there. He wondered if Charles did.

“Well, we can see where things go from there.”

“That’s two things.”

“More, maybe, if you’re not too sore.”

“I am,” Charles chuckled, groaning. “I don’t think I’ve ever been sorer.”

“Flatterer.”

“I think you’re in my debt now. Two—or more—to one.”

Erik pouted. “You’re not supposed to keep tabs.”

“Too bad. Now listen,” –he pushed Erik’s hand away to make sure he did just that—“After you’ve talked to Miss Frost, I want you to get all the information you can manage about the Lovegoods.”

“The Lovegoods? Why? They haven’t lived here in years.”

“If the house was as active with them as people say, then they’re the only ones who seem to have incurred as much of its attention as you. I want to know why. What do you and they share?”

“Fuck, you’re keeping me busy. You realize I have a full-time job in addition to being your errand boy, right?”

“Come now, don’t be bitter, I’ll be keeping busy as well.”

“Driving around with cute teenagers,” Erik grumbled.

“I’ll be sure to inform Alex you think he's cute. But don’t underestimate us, we’re going to be _quite_ busy, I’ll have you know. I’ve got to beg the mayor’s office and the historical society for an extension with the house. If they say no, I could perhaps sneak back in. Mrs. Hudson never demanded the keys back, so I just hid them under the welcome mat. What?”

Erik had jerked against him, eyes wide with shock. He’d forgotten to tell him.

“Mrs. Hudson…Emma told me…”

“What? What did she tell you?”

“Mrs. Hudson is in the hospital. Was in the hospital.”

“What?! Why? Where?”

“I don’t know! That’s all Emma told me. She was in the hospital. Might still be—I don’t know what she went in for.  I assume she meant the main hospital, next town over.”

Charles’ eyes lit up eagerly. “That’s where the car rental place is too, I think.”

“What are you going to do?” Erik groaned.

“Me? Nothing! It would just be rude to be in the same town and not stop to visit her…maybe bring her a gift basket or something…make sure she’s okay…maybe ask just a little regarding what happened…”

Erik shook his head, rolling his eyes. Charles would do as he would, Erik had well learned. It was take it or leave it, and he’d gained too much return on his earnings to consider throwing in the towel now _._

“Just as long as you don’t forget about dinner,” he growled, kissing the man roughly, but quick, before Charles could accuse him of seduction.

“Thank you,” Charles murmured, touching his jaw and holding him in place.

Erik could only blink, just as confused as he was surprised.

“For what?”

“For understanding. For letting me do what I have to do.”

Smiling easily for once, Erik kissed him again. “Thank me later. When we’ve got time for you to do it properly.”


	42. Chapter 42

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: I'M SORRY! This was a long time coming, and it short at that. But I have LOTS of good excuses! I just got a new job with a lengthy commute and I'm not allowed to use the computer at work. I got the standard winter flu and have been using my free time to sleep and heal. I've been house-sitting with a very needy dog who would rather I gaze directly into her big brown eyes and pet her constantly rather than write for you good people. And, lastly, it's practically Christmas, and I've turned into a full-time shopper. So, things are going to be fraught for a while while I'm dealing with this commute and then moving into a new apartment on the 1st and paying attention to this dog (this is why I'm a cat person...) I'll get chapters up as soon as I can!

Charles walked him to his car like a proper gentleman, except the man seemed more concerned about responsibilities than chivalry or romance.

“Try to pin Emma down early, I’ll be busy later in the day getting the house set up yet again. Remember, temperature _decrease_ , what did she see, hear, feel—the slightest thing may be important. Get it recorded, if you can.”

“That’s going to be hard, since Hank still has my recorder.”

Charles pulled the machine out of his back pocket and handed it over, starting right back in on his honey-do list. Get Emma’s statement, record it, transcribe it, email it, call Charles, or Alex if he couldn’t reach Charles—he had Alex’s number, right? Here was Alex’s number.

He had the folder still with page after page of graphs, readings, lines and lines of data, and used this to walk him through the highlights of the data once more, pointing out what he was apparently supposed to turn around and point out to Emma, but Erik didn’t pay much attention, digging for his car keys instead. Emma wouldn’t respond well to a show-and-tell. He could do this, maybe, miraculously, but only if he figured something out on his own. Blackmail, possibly, or just simple bluffing. If he said, here’s the proof, and pointed at a stupid line graph she’d probably just laugh in his face, or else suspend him. Charles might be intelligent, even clever, but he didn’t know Emma, and he didn’t realize his ‘proof’ looked a lot less impressive to laymen.

“I get it, I get it!” Erik groaned, snatching the folder from him and snapping it shut.

“I’m not done!” Charles balked, trying to grab it back, but Erik twisted his arm out of the way, over the roof of his car—Charles’ hip knocked his trying to get it and Erik dropped his other arm, trapping the man there against him.

“Stop that,” Charles growled, blushing brightly, wriggling in his grip but that only made Erik smile all the more.

“Stop what?”

“I mean it!” And he pulled himself hard out of Erik’s grasp, setting his clothes right again and looking around angrily as if someone might be watching. Erik followed his gaze, and scowled—the white van was still there, which meant the team was still there. At least Raven’s green Jag seemed to be missing, but that went little way towards appeasing him at the moment.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” he groaned, rolling his eyes. Seriously? Charles wasn’t going to touch him in public just because his team hadn’t driven off yet? What was the point? It wasn’t like they, or Darwin at least, didn’t think Charles wouldn’t jump him as soon as they hit the city limits. Was abstaining in the parking lot going to change that?

Charles huffed with his own imagined indignity: “Can’t you contain yourself for one hour? Haven’t you gotten enough?”

“No,” he said with a happy grin, thinking of what Charles thought he’d gotten enough of. Even though Erik’s black collar sat high on Charles’ throat, he could still make out the dark marks his mouth had put there. He reached out and touched them.  

Not for long—with a growl and a twist Charles was free from his grasp again, although he couldn’t go far if he wanted to keep browbeating Erik about this Emma thing, and Erik knew Charles well enough by now to know it took him longer than this to get over his urge to browbeat.

“You’re being ridiculous,” Erik pointed out, smiling, leaning back on his car and flipping through the folder leisurely even though the numbers meant nothing to him, didn’t equate to anything in his brain. “You’re going to be here for god knows how long. What do you expect to do? Sit on your hands the entire time? Is that going to make them believe you’re being a dutiful little boy over here? Are they going to feel your good behavior through the ethos? They’re going to be in Maine. How will they know if you behave yourself or not?”

“They’re not in Maine yet,” Charles pointed out, but his gaze was distant, his mouth tight and…hurt, almost.

“What is it?” Erik asked, surprised, and he forgot that it wouldn’t be taken as soothing, when he reached out held Charles’ shoulder. The man shrugged him off.

“Nothing.” Again something was closed off, held back from him. Erik frowned miserably, and in his misery focused on what was in front of him.

“What's this?” he asked, staring at the yellow sheet of legal pad in the folder, scarred and scratched with ink, with scribbled black flames.

“What? Oh, just some doodling I found in your satchel.”

Erik glanced at the man and was glad that he did: Charles was blushing, and that’s what Erik made think of it.

“If it’s just some random doodle then why did you keep it?”

Blinking at him and then at the paper, Charles was silent for a long moment. “It just…I don’t know…I just thought…I thought it would mean something to you. It doesn’t mean anything to you?”

Erik pulled the sheet out, showing it to Charles as if he hadn’t seen it before, as if he hadn’t taken it out of his satchel, uncrumpled it, and probably scanned it for Hank, just to be absolutely sure, before slipping it at the back of this folder for him. “It’s a bunch of squiggly lines—how could this mean something to me?”

“I don’t know!” Charles whined. “I thought it sort of looked like…a drawing. Flames or something.”

Erik frowned and looked at it again. Yellow paper, pale pink lines. Looks like he’d started writing something for the article, something about temperature readings or Herz units. General notes about the investigation, about Charles himself. Then line after line was skipped, until down at the bottom was a row of hard, harsh black squiggles that made up a series of violent flames.

Erik crumpled it up and tossed it in the vicinity of the trashcan by the staircase. Charles didn’t run after it so he must really have made a copy.

“Go ahead and leave this stuff at home when you come for dinner. I’ll be in charge of coming up with more interesting subject matter for us.”

“I don’t imagine there’ll be much talking going on,” Charles grinned, and from the glint in his eye Erik thought the man would be kissing him right then, or at least caressing him, if it weren’t for the team, still milling about somewhere.

Closing the folder once more, Erik stepped back, getting the right key ready for speedy escape. If Charles didn’t even want to touch him in public he could only imagine how he’d take this.

“I don’t know. There’s still the matter of you dating me.”

Charles grimaced and glanced all about, as if he’d been propositioned scandalously, possibly at church, or a funeral.

“What?!” the man balked.

“Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten so quickly. I only just asked you last night.” Having opened his door, Erik now leaned over the top of it to tease Charles in earnest. “Don’t tell me my cock has amnesia-producing abilities along with everything else.”

Charles refused to be teased though, refused to play along.

“I thought you were joking. Or that it was the byproduct of some sort of temporary insanity, which wouldn’t be unheard of after the day you’d had.”

Charles’s borrowed shirt was warm and starched in Erik’s grasp when he reached forward and took him by the collar, tugging him close enough to kiss.   

“You thought wrong.”

* * *

Going back to work was a lot like coming back to one’s hometown after years away. It was exactly the same as he remembered it, and it took him a minute to realize that of _course_ it was the same as he remembered it, he’d been gone two fucking days.  Still, despite that, his brain insisted on being silly and thinking things like, “Wow, the whole place is just as blindingly white as I remember,” and “Huh, everyone still ducks behind their computers when Emma is in a snit.”

“What’s going on?” he asked Rebecca at reception. Even here, just outside the main office floor, he could hear Emma shouting inside. For a woman who tended to get quieter the more danger you were in, this was unnervingly off-kilter, and everyone was reacting with appropriate terror.

“Youuur funeral if you _don’t_ keep youuur head-down,” Rebecca drawled at him from behind her computer screen. She had a strong Avalon accent, like most everyone in this town, but she worked hard to cover it up, so it always sounded as if she were play-acting for a dramatic period piece. “She’s in _rare form._ ” Looking around her computer, Rebecca’s murky, fluid eyes flashed over him, up and down, taking in his crumpled suit jacket over his borrowed T-shirt. “What happened to youuu? You look awwwful.”

“Thanks, that’s sweet,” Erik growled back and, reshouldering his satchel, walked right into the lion’s den.

Emma’s blinds were only half-drawn, so he had an idea of where she was before he shoved his way through her door, realizing only after it worked that he was lucky it had worked, lucky she hadn’t locked her door. Probably she hadn’t believed anyone would be dumb enough to walk in on her while she was screaming her heart out into her work phone.

“I didn’t call you for a history lesson about the fucking Bill of Rights!” she shouted, standing behind her desk to more aggressively yell into the receiver. She didn’t seem to notice Erik, so he could get the file Charles had given him out of his satchel without her watching him fumble. Did it look more official, more threatening, or should he have left it behind as a useless prop? What if she asked to look at it? He didn't know how to explain all this line graph stuff. He’d have to bluff well enough that she wouldn’t ask to see inside it. Let her believe it was more damning evidence than it actually was, as damning as Charles thought it was. “I want her sued, Larry—for libel, for slander, for everything under the sun—I want her on the docket, in court, in front of a fucking firing squad!” Glaring up at Erik, snarling silently at him, she pointed back out the door. Instead, he sat down before her desk, folding his legs one over the other. Her eyes tightened, but she was too busy to trifle with him further, turning and yelling again.

“What do I even pay you for? How many times do I have to explain this to you? I don’t care, I don’t care, I don’t care! Now you either draw up the papers and serve that bitch or kiss your cushy retainer goodbye! _That’s it_!”

And sure enough, with that, she slammed the phone back in its cradle.

“ _You_!” she snarled at him, perfectly curled hair swinging she turned to him so quickly. “You’re late!”

“Hardly,” he shrugged, keeping her in his sights, refusing to let his eyes waver or fall. “But that’s beside the point.”

“I haven’t time for the point. In case you weren’t aware, I’m in the middle of something.”

“Me too.”

“I know, you’ve got an article to write. Now get to it. And go comb your hair. Just because your lover has ditched you doesn’t mean you can come to work looking like a beach bum.”

Erik almost smiled by accident then.

 _She didn’t know._ Of course she didn’t know—how would she know? But it meant she wouldn’t be able to kill him. He had information now. He had a safety net. He might just survive long enough to actually have that dinner with Charles tonight. Lucky him.

“You, on the other hand, are looking beautiful as always—despite yesterday.”

Her eyes flashed, wary, surprised, but she bluffed her way ahead anyway.

“Yesterday? What happened yesterday?” Silly question, it gave him the opportunity to answer.

Slowly, he leaned forward and put the folder on the table. Her pale blue eyes flashed to it, maybe slightly scared now. Her brow furrowed slightly.

“Really, Emma,” he said quietly. “They’ve got that house rigged up from stem to stern. What made you think you could hide it?”

Game. Set. Match. Eyes gone wide, Emma fell back into her chair, just staring and staring at him while his words sunk in. When she looked at the file again, her gaze was frightened. She wiped her hands on her skirt and then pressed them to the table top.

“What did that spoiled bastard tell you?”

“The same thing you’re going to tell me,” he said, skin hot and prickling with sweat under his borrowed T-shirt. “What happened to you in that house yesterday.”

Shaking her head, Emma, rubbed her brow with one delicate hand.

“You wouldn’t believe it. I don’t believe it. It happened but I don’t believe it.”

“What?” Erik asked, fidgeting. He knew he shouldn’t, he knew it would interfere with the tape recording in his pocket, if it was catching anything at all. It wasn’t prime location for it, but he didn’t dare put the thing right out in the open. “Emma, what did you see?”

“See?” she asked, genuinely confused, but she was too distracted to really worry about it, too distracted to do anything.

“Emma,” he said, trying to get her back on track. Was this how Charles felt? Was this how Charles did it? “Emma, stay with me. What happened? Walk me through it. You got to the house. You went inside.”

“What? Yes…Yes, we went inside. Jennifer…Mr. Munoz gave us a tour. He was giving us a tour, and Jennifer was setting up. We were going to take pictures, I had to make sure I looked all right, so I slipped into the bathroom.”

“The upstairs bathroom?” he asked, shoulders tightening.

“Oh, yes. Upstairs, master bath. Nice place, cute I mean, in a country bumpkin kind of way. I was fixing my hair and…” Erik twisted in his seat, skin hot and uncomfortable, memory prickling at his brain. The bright lights above the mirror, his own flushed reflection, and the cupboard door tapping open against his shins. “I didn't hear it at first. I wasn't thinking of it I guess. It's not that it got louder, I just suddenly realized what I was hearing. I heard it.”

“What?” Erik balked. “ _Heard_ what?”

“It. The baby. The Lovegood baby. Crying.”

“Baby? What baby?”

“The baby! You’ve lived here your whole damned life, Lensherr, don’t pretend you don’t know about the Lovegood baby. Don’t tell me you didn’t inform Xavier about it before he left? How’s he going to do a proper investigation if he doesn’t know the history?”

Erik nearly opened his mouth and explained that Charles’ work was one of data and numbers, not history or personal experience, but he managed to stop himself.

“I mentioned it.” Well, Alex and Sean had.

“Everyone always said,” Emma continued, breathless. “That that baby never died of SIDS.  I always thought it was kind of dickish of this backwater town--I mean, a baby dies and you blame the family, the mom? Some post-partum murder, a Satanic ritual, or else just simple stupidity in moving into a haunted house in the first place. But now I think there's something in it--I mean, there has to be. No SIDS baby cries out for justice like that."

“That’s what it said, is it? ‘Emmmaaaaa! Justiiiicccee!’”

“Well what the hell did you boys find then?” she growled back at him angrily, and he sat back, telling himself to stop goading her.

“Nothing like that.”

“Well you’ve got to call him. Tell him. Let him know where to look, what to look for.”

Erik mulled it over. She didn’t want to kill him. He needn’t appease her. But what the hell, she’d done him a good turn, and Charles would reward him later due to her sharing spirit.

“You can tell him yourself. He’s at the Dew Drop Inn, room 247.”

It took her a moment. She just sort of stared at him, letting it sink it. When it did she didn’t completely trust it.

“He _was_ at the Dew Drop Inn, room 247.”

To which Erik responded with a slow, unfurling smile.

Emma’s eyes went wide, her mouth expanding to a disbelieving grin.

“You’re joking me!”

“Nope,” he smiled.

Leaning back in her chair, Emma looked him up and down, eyes straying to his crotch so unnervingly that he moved his satchel overtop it. He was quite over women staring at his groin so avidly.

“My god,” she breathed. “I mean, I'd heard the rumors, but that’s all I thought they were. You must _really_ be packing.”

“I’m pretty sure that counts as sexual harassment,” he growled. “And what makes you think he can’t be staying for my scintillating conversation?”

“Because I’ve been talking to you for years, darling. I’d know if you were capable of scintillating conversation.”


	43. Chapter 43

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No I'm not dead, or maimed, or struck down with Ebola or anything. Let's just say it's no coincidence that Erik talks a lot about writer's block in this chapter. I don't have the next chapter written yet, so it'll be a while (although hopefully not 7 months!) before that's posted. Luckily the wonderful ErnstD has offered to Beta this, and that's at least stopping my constant back and forths with each chapter ("It's ready! I'll sleep on it just to be sure! Oh, wait, that's awful, I'll completely rewrite it!" Rinse and repeat. And you wondered why it took me 7 months to write 4000 words...) All I can say it, I'M SO SORRY it's taken so long to write so little, and that I didn't use those 7 months to write the whole rest of the story so I could pay you all back by posting the rest of it all at once and putting you out of your misery. Thank you, all of you who have stuck with this thing, and poked and prodded me into sticking with it, and here's hoping it's all looking up from here! This thing wouldn't exist without you guys. Thanks for all your support! I'll try to stop disappointing you guys ;)

Erik shifted his fingers, feeling the keys beneath them without actually pressing any. He should definitely be pressing some; Emma was going to kill him if she didn't see him pressing some, and damned soon. He glanced up over his blank computer screen, and sure enough the woman was standing at her window, glaring at him. When their gazes caught she pointed wrathfully at his computer and then dragged her finger across her throat. Erik slid down in his seat until his computer blocked her out. He took a deep breath and wiped his damp palms on his jeans before putting them back in ready order. Index fingers on F and J, thumb on the space bar. Still, nothing happened.

What the hell did Emma want from him? The thought came suddenly and rather petulantly, he'd be the first to admit. Hadn't she gotten enough? He'd already written an entire article all about Charles staying, for an emergency supplement. Could she really expect him to write an entirely different article in addition, a front page article at that, thousands upon thousands of words? And about that damned house especially?

He hadn't minded the first article; that had gone fast enough. An entire article about how he was basically so good as sex he could get Charles Xavier of all people to skive off work waiting for more had a habit of putting one in a good mood, even if Emma had said it would be unprofessional to actually mention the whole sex-god part per se. This second one though… He'd promised Emma a masterpiece, something to scare the shit out of every man, woman, and literate child to cross its path. Today, with Emma's foul mood, she seemed keen on holding him to that promise and more.

He took his hands off the keys long enough to rub his tired face, and Emma was immediately rapping on her window at him. He started typing nonsense words just to look busy, that's what she'd driven him to.

WE HAD SEX EVERY MORNING.

YES, I AM REALLY THAT GOOD IN BED.

CHARLES WILL BE MIIIIIINNNNNNEEEE!

"She's in a hellish mood today," Janos said from closer than Erik was expecting, making Erik jump and jab at his keyboard, deleting everything, hopefully before Janos could read any of that stuff. "Reigniting the old feud and all."

The man was watching him over the top of his cubicle flirtatiously, arms folded over the top of it. Erik guessed that meant he hadn't gotten back together with his boyfriend yet.

"Hope she's not being too… _rough_  on you."

"Janos," he glared. "What can I do for you?" He realized as soon as he'd said it that that was not what he should have said, sounded too provocative, as if he were just begging for it. Janos seemed to be taking it the same way.

"Ohhhh," Janos drawled, leaning his head to the side. "Nice of you to offer…Now that you mention it…"

Erik was overjoyed when his office phone went off.

"Sorry," he cheered. "I've got to get this."

But when he picked up the phone he immediately wished he hadn't.

"Hello?" he questioned into the phone line. His chipper was met with only silence.

And in that instant he suddenly remembered his cell phone, all the calls from yesterday, the messages, the unknown number. His breath choked off in his throat, his stomach tightening sickeningly. Just before he was about to hang up, a voice spoke on the other end, low and growling.

"You gaddam asshole," the voice said, and Erik about melted in his seat he was so absolutely relieved.

"Mark," he sighed, laughing.

"I thought you were dead. Ghost-murdered, lyin' in some ditch some place. What, you doan answer yer phone no more? I ben tryin ta reach you fer days."

"Hey, hey, I told you last night that I was fine."

"Textin' me yer fine ain't the same as answering yer gaddam phone. Any murderer can text."

"Well, here I am. I'm alive. What do you need?"

This seemed to take Mark by surprise, as if he weren't expecting to need a reason to call, and he paused while he gathered his thoughts, making Erik fidget again with the dead air of the silent line. Even knowing it was Mark, it still made him uncomfortable.

He glanced at his satchel, at his cell phone there, but didn't dare open it. He didn't want to know.

"Well, I thought…I thought maybe I could take ya out ta lunch," Mark finally said, gruffly, and Erik stopped everything, pulling back enough to stare at the handset. Had he heard that right? Was this real life?

Erik glanced up at Emma, now at her desk, yelling at the phone again.

Suddenly this was all coming into line—Emma's ire, her threats to the lawyer, Janos' mention of a feud, and Mark offering to take him to lunch, which could only mean one thing.

"What'd she do now?" Erik sighed, rubbing his brow.

"What?" Mark asked innocently. "Who?"

"Get off it, Mark. You only ever take me to lunch when that sister of yours has done something really atrocious. When was the last time? Back when she put that meth-lab house-fire in the paper the same week I was planning to, remember that? And before that? Back when she wrote about the Founding Days and got half her bibliography from my high school paper on Asser Franco? Are you still going to try and tell me you're taking me out to lunch but she hasn't done something that's going to piss me off?"

Mark only lasted two seconds before he spilled everything. He couldn't keep his mouth shut to save his life. Great attribute in a cop.

"Iss really not her fault," Mark gushed. "She was juss upset, thass all, with Miss Fross an' this ghose-hunner stuff—you know how stressful this all is, this mess with her n Miss Fross. It's liable ta make anybody a li'l crazy from time ta time."

"Mark," Erik growled out slowly. "Spit it out."

"Well…okay, she mighta written a little article, you know, juss gettin her word out there. Juss her side of the story. Is that so wrong? Does that really count as libel or slander or whatever it is?"

"Probably," Erik sighed, glancing at Emma. "What'd she say?"

"You haven't read it?"

"Read  _The_   _Sentinel_? Emma would put my damned eyes out, you know that."

"Well," Mark murmured, and his voice got low, so Erik knew he was at his desk today, trying not to be overheard by the one other person in their tiny office. He tried to clamp down on the part of himself that very much got off on Mark's voice, low and breathy right in his ear. It was going to be hard enough to convince Charles to date him without these lingering feelings for Mark getting in the way. But at the same time it was hard to stop cold a one-sided love affair he'd been nursing for years. Erik struggled to focus on the words in his ear rather than the tingling in his stomach. "She mighta…she mighta given her opinion that…that the reason Miss Fross got the story and she didn't was…was because Miss Fross sorta…sorta well, hell, _pimped you out_. Oh, hell, man, I don't mean to put you on the spot like this. I wanted ta discuss it all o'er lunch, ease ya inna it."

Erik just shrugged, disappointed with the shock value of this revelation. Moira wasn't wrong, after all, and yet he wondered how she'd struck on that. Somehow he didn't think it was a blind guess. Erik was gay but other than that there was absolutely nothing in his background that could have made Moira think he was capable of getting close to another human being, much less to do so so quickly and from scratch, with a perfect stranger.

"How'd she come across that tidbit?" he asked.

"Well…she says she's got a source—won't tell me who, of course, journalist integrity an all—who saw ya'll together—the ghose hunner I mean…you know… _illicitly_. Not that I believe it! I mean…anybody can snitch on anybody, and of course I know you'd never…I mean, you wouldn't…not with…um."

Erik had his bets on Jennifer. She wasn't the type to have allegiances, what with her budget, and she probably saw this story in terms of paychecks, as she should. This town was too small for Erik to not know her entire life story, so he knew she was raising two kids alone on her freelance photography salary, augmented with CPA duties during tax season. He also heard she sometimes moonlighted cleaning an office block nights. It wasn't like she was doing him a lot of harm after all. This wasn't the New York Times, no one cared if he slept with the subjects of his articles. As for Charles, Erik was pretty sure Moira's article wasn't outing him: he wasn't the first random guy Charles had seduced, and the man had never made it seem like they were some big secret…right? Charles had warned him to be discreet, but Erik had thought that was more about being professional than being in the closet. Darwin had been upset that Charles would be dumb enough to sleep with a journalist—was that because he'd assumed Erik was going to be the one to out the man in his own article?

"So Emma's my pimp and promised Charles a night with me in exchange for exclusive rights to this article? Am I getting it right?"

"Well…jeeze this wasn't how I wan'ed to break it to you…Guess I don't need ta buy you lunch now."

"Not that Emma would unchain me from my desk for it anyway. Your sister has put her into a fine mood and she's even more of a slave driver than usual today."

"Shit so I guess I do owe you… Dinner?"

Erik grinned. "Sorry, can't."

"Don't tell me she's got you working all night!"

"If you must know, I've got a date."

"What?!" Mark gasped. "I thought you were saving Stanley for a rainy day?"

"Not  _Stanley_ ," Erik growled, sickened by the thought. Stanley was technically on his list of men he hadn't slept with but would sleep with in a pinch, but the fact that the guy was his hairstylist and didn't seem like the type to let him sneak out in the morning without taking it out on Erik's hair next time he needed a trim had been holding him back. Now that he'd slept with Charles, the mere thought of settling for someone like Stanley, like _anyone_ , was actually sickening.

"Who, then?"

"If you must know, Charles Xavier," Erik said smugly, but only got to hear one of Mark's shocked exclamations before the phone cut off. Erik was horrified but not surprised to see Emma standing in wrathful indignation beside his desk, French manicured fingers stabbing down the plunger on his phone. Gulping, Erik scooted his chair away from her. There wasn't enough room to get out of smacking range, but he at least didn't want to be close enough to get the full force of it. He reached out as far as he could in order to drop the phone back in its cradle.

"Get. Back. To work," Emma growled, and he was pretty sure if she wasn't breathing actual smoke she was at least getting as close as was humanly possible.

"Yes ma'am," he eked out.

"And turn that goddamn thing off!" she growled as well, spearing the air towards his satchel, where Erik realized his cell phone was ringing. He lunged for it desperately, spilling some of the contents as he rooted for his phone and hammered at the ignore button. When he looked up again, Emma was gone, and he jumped even though he wasn't surprised when her office door slammed again. Everyone around the office was suddenly extremely busy at their keyboards, possibly sending mayday emails to family and friends, begging for rescue or delivering last wills and testaments.

Erik glared down at his phone. Why did the damn thing have to pick right then to go off? He never got calls usually, least of all at the office right in front of his boss on a very bad day when he had already been caught slacking on the phone once, now making him seem like a damned switchboard operator at a love line.

He would downright maim whoever—

Erik stopped, staring down at the number, which now buzzed to inform him it had left him a voicemail. It was that same, unknown, local number. And it had already left him 21 messages that morning.

 _It's a bill collector_ , he told himself, skin tingling.  _Or else a telemarketer—some machine in Florida is stuck on repeat and is just calling my number over and over and over again. Except the area code is local. Well a telemarketer in Avalon, then. What--those don't exist?_  Erik didn't think they did.

 _Just listen. They left a goddamned voicemail for a reason, give it a listen_. Erik thought of what a relief it would be to hear some auto-recording offer him a timeshare in Columbia, or some Republican incumbent's bored intern ask him who he'd be supporting this primary. What a load off that would be! Why think of the alternative? So, dutifully not thinking of the alternative, Erik put in his password and went to his voicemails. There was a momentary hesitation, but in the end he took a deep breath, grew a pair, and stabbed Play.

His heart was beating so loudly in his ears he at first thought it was drowning out the speaker, but when he focused he realized this was not the case. He could hear the electronic buzz of a live line on the message, there was just no one there. Erik grit his teeth, listening even more closely but at the same time shrinking away. This felt like those jump-and-scare videos—look closely, look very very closely, and just as your face was practically pressed to the computer screen: boo! Screaming witchface. Every time.

Erik braced himself for the audio version of a witchface, white-knuckling his phone.

Instead, he realized he could hear someone breathing.

It was so faint he almost couldn't make it out, but the longer the message played, the more he could hear the pattern of it: in, out, in, out. It had a soft rasp and crackle, like someone sick. Like someone scorched.

Then a roar—blasting into his ear, making him jump, yelp out loud like a scalded dog—goddamn it, _not a_   _roar_ , but the phone going off,  _vibrating_  in his hand.

Growling with growing frustration, anger, Erik scowled at the phone screen.

It was the same number, that same damned infernal local number, glimmering at him with two choices: Answer or Decline?

 _It's nothing!_  he snarled internally. _It's nothing—want me to fucking prove it? I'll prove it to you!_

Shaking with anger, Erik swiped _Answer_.

"Who is this?" he snarled, shoulders aching he was so tense.

Silence, but the knowledge that there was someone— _something_ —on the other line, was the only thing that met him for a long moment. But, before he could be completely terrified, a surprised voice broke his terror.

"Well, that's not very nice," it said, and Erik melted so far in his chair he nearly slipped right out of it.

"Fuck's sake—Charles!"

"Hello to you, too."

Dropping his head against his desk, Erik practiced taking deep breaths, but had to stop when he asked, confused. "Where the hell are you calling me from?" The answer was so obvious he was surprised he hadn't thought of it before: "Is this Alex's phone? Was that obsessive brat trying to get a hold of me all this time?"

"Alex? No—it's the house phone."

"Whose house?"

Charles laughed at him: "Whose house do you think?! What other house is there? I'm at the Ash Creek House!" Erik was sure his brain had stopped working, but that couldn't be the case, because he could still hear Charles yammering on in his ear as if nothing were horribly wrong. "Had to dig this relic out of a closet someplace. Luckily it worked as soon as I plugged it in, small miracles. I knew they couldn't have actually cut service to this place—how would anyone call out in an emergency? They just hid the phone so tourists wouldn't abuse it. Thank god. I'm having absolute _shite_ service, I swear. Even Alex isn't having the slightest bit of luck. He never does, though, he says. Some backwater provider for ten dollars a month or something. Why even bother owning a phone at that point? Why not just survive by carrier pigeon—is some signal-less hunk of plastic any better?"

Erik realized Alex couldn't be right up on the man if he were talking like this, and was terrified anew. Where was Alex? Why was Charles alone? Alone in that awful house…

"Charles, where's Alex? Where are you?"

"I told you, at the house. The bathroom, if you must know."

"What?"

"Nothing untoward. God, Erik, if you knew my morning, you wouldn't begrudge me hiding in the bathroom like some preteen sob sister." As if to prove his point, there was a sudden thundering banging that made Erik jump an inch through his skin even though it was muffled by the phone line. He heard someone yelling.

"Just a minute!" Charles shouted back crisply.

"Who the hell was that?" Erik asked. He couldn't imagine Alex banging on the bathroom door while his mentor was in there doing god-knew-what, not unless it was dire emergency. But the voice hadn't sounded as if it belonged to someone being ghost-murdered. It hadn't sounded deep enough for a boy, either.

Sure enough, before Charles could even answer him, there was more pounding, and this time, even louder, Erik could make out the unmistakable and absolutely maddening sound of Charles' little sister.

"I hear you in there you know!" she shouted. "You're not fooling anyone!"

The voice got only slightly fainter as Charles apparently moved away from the door, but that little bit was enough to no longer be able to make out the words. Erik got the feeling that was a good thing.

"Like I was saying," the man intoned.

"What's she doing there? I thought she was off to Maine with the rest of them?"

"No," Charles sighed. "Travelling did not agree with her, she decided. She's elected to stay in Avalon. Claims she can't get enough of the place. Something in the water, I suppose."

"Shit," Erik frowned.

"Exactly. What about you? How's your day going? Get something for me? Something Emma-related perhaps?"

Erik glanced up at her window. She was at her computer, momentarily distracted, but he knew it wouldn't last long.

"Not now. Dinner tonight."

"Um…about that…"

"What?" asked Erik, spine suddenly chilling. "What is it?"

He could hear Charles' deep breath on the other end, like he was about to walk across hot coals.

"I'm afraid I can't come to dinner tonight."

"WHAT?!"

"Erik!" Janos was giving him a warning glance over the cubicle and Erik lunged at his keyboard, hitting random keys but very quickly so Emma would have no reason to suspect he wasn't working very hard on his article, even if he was on the phone. He was not going to let her hang up this call as well.

"What the hell do you mean you can't come to dinner tonight?" he hissed, cricking his neck to pin his phone between his ear and shoulder. "Just because of that bitch sister of yours?"

"Watch it," Charles warned. "She may be a bitch sister but she's _my_ bitch sister. Honestly, Erik, she hasn't let me out of her sight all morning—there's no way I could sneak away for long enough to eat an entire meal, it's just not possible."

"But Charles!"

"Look, I'm sorry. I don't like it any more than you do. I'd much rather have dinner with you, alone, but I just don't see how it's feasible. Oh, it's for the best anyway. With all the work I have to do, and Darwin undoubtedly calling to check up on me later…well, it's best if we keep it professional in any case." Even Charles didn't seem to be able to muster his regular credibility on that last part.

"Invite her," Erik blurted out.

"What?"

"Invite her along. We can all eat together, I don't mind."

"Erik, no. You've got no idea the mood she's in. You can hear her at the door. She's a madwoman. I can't inflict this on the unsuspecting public. We'd get booted out in no time."

"Then we won't. We'll have dinner at my place. I'll cook something—I'm a good cook, and she doesn't scare me. Invite her over."

"Erik," Charles said slowly, but Erik could tell he was gradually winning the man over. Charles would obviously be happy with an excuse to keep their dinner date, even one as flimsy as this one, a revelation that stoked Erik's ego and buffeted him to new heights of gushing.

"I want to see you," he said. "I don't care if she's there, too, I just want to see you. Please."

Charles was silent for a long time, making Erik nearly fidget in his seat again, but finally the man breathed across the line: "Okay. Okay, yes. What time? When can I come over?"

 _Right now_ , Erik wanted to say, would have given anything to be able to say that, but he couldn't. Clamping down on the elation of winning an argument, he said, "Seven. I'll definitely be done by seven. If I have to turn into a fucking robot to get this assignment done by seven, I'll do it."

"Then I'll see you at seven," the man said softly. "Until then, darling."

Erik couldn't help but beam. If this wasn't the first time Charles had called him 'darling' without a hint of sarcasm, it at least felt like it.

Even though it would only invoke Emma's wrath, he couldn't help but give the phone a fond little look as he finished with it, setting it gratefully on the countertop, stopping his mad-dash typing spree for a second. Good job, phone. Whatever other bits of betrayal he'd been beaten down with over the last few days, the thing was officially forgiven. It would officially always be the machine that had transmitted to him, gently and at clear volume, Charles calling him 'darling' with real affection.

With a start, he realized he had to get to fucking work. He had an assignment to write, and didn't have all night to write it. In fact, he didn't even have till 7, not if he expected to have anything to put on the table when Charles and his brat sister arrived. And Azazel too, he realized. Not likely he'd let himself be left behind. Erik wondered if he should set a place for Alex as well, since the boy seemed insistent on following Charles around like a little puppy.

But his determination only lasted him about a second. About the time it took to turn back to his computer, to focus his eyes on the mishmash he had written, to realize it was not mishmash at all:

_BURNITBURNITBU RNI TBURNITB URN ITB URNITBUR NITBURNITBURNIT._

It wasn't a conscious decision, it was nothing but pure primal fight-or-flight that took over. Erik grabbed his cell phone, swung his satchel over his shoulder, and made a run for it.


	44. Chapter 44

Erik didn't drive, momentarily forgot he had a car, probably was in no state to drive even if he had remembered. The walk did him good though, worked out his excess energy, his abounding physical desire to lash out, exorcise these awful emotions. This thing, this house, this whatever it was he was dealing with, was pushing in on him from too many fronts now. When he surveyed the battlefield it was too cluttered with foes. And worst of all, a new one seemed to have cropped up right beside him. Inside him.

 _Stop it,_ he growled internally, steps speeding up even more, till he was nearly flying from one footfall to the next.

He made it to the police station in record time, damp with sweat and sunlight but chilled through.

The police station was one of the oldest buildings in Avalon, but still looked pristinely new-that's what fine marble and alabaster and bronze got you. It, unlike the rest of this town, was built to last despite the fact that their piddling population had an equally piddling number of criminals. In spite of its lack of use, or maybe because of it, the station was without a doubt the nicest building in the entire county, a county made of farmers and wooden barns and cheap concrete strip malls. Erik had to assume it had been very expensive, but he didn't know for sure. No one had ever outright said it had cost the tax-payers hundreds of thousands, and this in a town where people could find something to gossip about from the direction in which a lawn was mowed. The words "private donor" were thrown around a lot, true, but Erik didn't know of any individual wealthy enough or civic-minded enough to have donated a place this lux, and no one seemed to have a name for this private donor. Erik wondered if the town history hid a retired mob boss, or worse, but the place was frankly too boring for him to imagine such a scenario.

"So yer still alave," Mildred, the receptionist, said when he walked in, clicking her dentures. Dressed in a dull floral dress and fraying cardigan, she looked decidedly out of place in the grand rotunda entryway, with its high, artfully molded ceilings and sparkling fixtures. Yet she'd seemingly gotten the job in crotchety infancy and showed all signs of staying at her post long after death, which may have happened years ago, judging by appearance. "Herd you wen' out ta that ghose house. Assumed ya muss be ded ba naw."

Erik refused to rise to the bait, didn't bother responding to her. She saw any comment, no matter how inane, as a challenge to provide grandmotherly advice. A chain-smoking lifetime secretary was the last person he needed advice from right now.

"Whut? Cat gotcher tongue? You need ta lern ta get 'long with people. Catch more flies with honey than vinegar, don'chu know that much?"

Erik couldn't cross the entryway fast enough to get away without a response, and so went with the ubiquitous, "Yes, ma'am" as he pushed open the glass doors to the station proper.

She couldn't even let that bit of nicety go passed uncommented on.

"Don'chu 'yes ma'am' me. Not in that tone, you don'."

What a harpy. No wonder her husband died early: six feet underground was the only tolerable spot to hear her from.

The office had high gothic windows all along the back wall, and desks spread out in the open of the marble flooring, although most of them were empty. The town could barely sustain criminals, much less officers. Most of the employees worked a day here and a day there, either in Avalon or at another of the nearby precincts. Erik didn't mind that: Mark, as a commissioned officer, never strayed far, and today it seemed Erik had him to himself. If you didn't count the high school intern clicking away at his computer in the corner, which Erik didn't. He had his headphones in and didn't look up when Erik walked in. But Mark did.

Mark was handsome, undeniably so, the sort of handsome that was featured on magazines, on the silver screen, in daydreaming fantasies across the globe. Erik couldn't pinpoint exactly what it was that did it; it was a mysterious mix of olive skin, chocolate eyes, perfectly coiffed hair, and a physique only improved by departmental blues. Best not to dwell on that; it was hard enough to convince Charles to date him without this schoolboy crush on Mark.

"Erik!" the man exclaimed. "I thought mebee you were mad at me, hangin up on me like that."

Erik forced the butterflies bursting in his stomach to settle the fuck back down, and dragged a free seat up to his friend, throwing himself into it. "Emma," he explained shortly.

"Well ya look like hell."

"Thanks," Erik mumbled. He felt even worse than that.

"That house, huh?" Mark said, eyes gleaming excitedly. But he seemed to see something in Erik which forbade that topic of discussion, so he moved on quickly. "Hell, man, I'm sorry. Guess my sister dinnit make it any easier on ya, throwin Fross in a tizzy like that. Well, maybe after yer date we can go get some drinks or something. On me. Take yer mind off it. I owe ya."

Erik hated the way his body perked up at that, the way his imagination took off at the thought of Mark being in his debt. 

"Sorry," he said, forcing his mind down a different track. "Don't plan on my date being done till around sunup."

Mark wrinkled his nose, shook his head distastefully. He was at best tolerant of Erik's sexual antics, not because they were rife with homosexuality but because the idea of promiscuity went against the grain of his puritanical sensibilities. He changed the subject automatically.

"So when does filming start?"

"I don't know," Erik shrugged.

"But they'll film you think?"

"I guess so. Charles thinks so."  _Charles._ He hoped the man was okay. He hoped the man couldn't feel Erik's schoolboy crush through the ethos. He got the eerie feeling the next time he saw the man Charles would have a knowing look and a cold shoulder just for him.

"Man, I always knew that house was a trip. I tole you I was in the same grade as the Lovegood girl, huh? Well, technically a grade below, but they were all conjoined that year, remember, cuz Mrs. Fitzgerald ran off with that sewage treatment man."

"Yeah, I remember."

"She invited me to her birthday, you know. Well, Moira, technic'lly, but issa same thing."

"Mmm-hmm."

"And then, soon as she went ta blow out tha candles, they all went out on thar own. Every lass one a them. Never leff a party before the cake 'fore."

Erik didn't want to hear this, even though he'd heard the story multiple times before. Before, he'd been able to brush it off, to roll his eyes. Not anymore. But luckily it didn't continue long as Mark looked around secretively and then leaned closer, voice low. Erik struggled not to squirm in his seat. The man was one of the few people on earth who could actually manage to look good even from five inches away.

Yet even in this pent up state Erik realized Mark's eyes didn't sparkle and glint just right, not like Charles'. That was progress, surely?

"Don' tell nobody, but...but I sorta pulled out tha ole file."

"What?" Erik asked, glancing around himself, making sure no one was listening in. Luckily, there was no one  _to_ listen in. "What file?"

"You know! When the police first got called out there, when the Lovegood baby died. Well it's technic'lly still an open investigation, you know. Cold, sure, but technic'lly open, just sittin downstairs in records," Mark whispered, pulling out his desk drawer.

Erik peeked and saw an old, fat, green file with scribbling all across the cover. Mark shut it again, swiftly. "I juss wan'ed to get a feel for it, ya know. I mean, I was juss a kid when it happened. All I knew was the normal town gossip."

"And?" Erik asked avidly, scooting closer. "Well? What'd you find out? Did the mom do it?"

Mark took a deep breath, but Erik was almost sure the man had started shaking his head when he was interrupted.

There was a noticeable noise of a toilet flushing and, too quickly for proper handwashing, the men's bathroom door creaked open. Mark jerked away, as if there were something scandalous about him and Erik sitting near one another, which was strange because Mark always made a big show about not caring that Erik was gay or that people sometimes thought they were dating (Erik wished. Well, used to wish...). Looking over his shoulder, Erik saw, instead of a normal annoying person interrupting a very important conversation, the absolutely  _most annoying person ever_ interrupting their very important conversation.

Paul recognized him in a second (despite Erik having spent over a year avoiding him) and glared expressively before Erik managed to settle himself back around, very dignified and nonchalant, and ignore him fully.

Never again would he pick up random guys at the annual police charity auction. Never again would he sleep with a guy even though his apartment was filled with hand-knit stuffed animals. Never again would he sleep with emotionally needy mama's boys. Wait, shit. He just realized that lately he fell into that last category. Hopefully Charles didn't have this same epiphany. He wondered suddenly what Charles was doing right then, if he was safe, if his sister was annoying the absolute shit out of him.

"Sorry," Mark whispered, watching Paul sit down. "I shoulda warned ya."

Erik just shrugged, not letting it get to him. The most Paul would do was sulk, same as he always did when he and Erik found themselves accidentally together. Erik had had a lot worse lately. And anyway, he had Mark here to distract him from any awkwardness.

"MacTaggert!" a booming voice suddenly exploded through the office, making everyone jump.

"Chief Boomer," Mark coughed, choking on his own spit as he jumped to his feet, slipping, falling hard against his desk. Erik didn't bother getting so upset, glaring at the buzz-cutted old linebacker standing in his office doorway. He'd never approved of Big Boom, maybe because the man thought it was a fun idea to routinely frighten young children with the line "If you don't listen to your parents, I'll come get you and lock you up!", a line he'd pulled on Erik as a child to immediate tears from him and shouted reprisals from his mother. Boom didn't approve of Erik either, since he insisted on coming around, "flirting" with his deputies. Then again, Boom didn't approve of most anybody, he even managed to carry a beef with Mark, mainly regarding the fact that Mark's great-great-great-great-grandfather or some such had quit the police force, so obviously Mark's line as a whole was unreliable. The thing was, a lot of people in this town probably agreed with him. That's what happened when you got a population this small, this old, with this little turnover. Grudges tended to last a while past the national average.

"I'll be right back," Mark coughed as Boomer glared him into his office.

Erik watched Mark go, watched his utility belt framing his slim, promising hips until the door to the office cut off his view. Now was his chance.

Scooting closer to Mark's desk, Erik looked around, at Paul's tense shoulders, that nameless student's head bent over his desk. He quietly eased Mark's drawer open, pulled the file out--lighter than he was expecting--and wrestled it into his satchel. If Charles was going to be happy with him before with his info from Emma, he'd be ecstatic now.

He stood up to clear out, run away before Mark returned and realized what he'd done, but from his stand he could see what Paul was working on, and stopped in his tracks. It was some computer program, and it was putting together a face.

"What are you doing?" he asked, standing at Paul's shoulder suddenly, feeling overheated.

"Oh," Paul bit out, entire body rigid with anger. "Naw you wanna talk to me?" Erik got the feeling he'd been preparing this speech for a long time, ever since he'd woken up alone with a scrawled note all those months or years ago, Erik couldn't really remember. "You leave withaw har'ly a word, like I'm some dollar wh-some tram- _withaw har'ly wun word_. You doan  _call_ me, you doan  _write_ \--when we meet you preten' like you doan even  _know_ me--you come 'round here tryin'a sleep with my co-worker-"

"What is this?" Erik asked again, cutting him off, pointing at the computer screen.

"Are you serious? Iss my job, you know what my job is, right? You 'member that much about me?"

"I need you to do something for me," Erik said. He knew there was a better way to put it, a way more likely to get him his way, but he couldn't think of how, couldn't seem to think strategically.

"Excuse me?" Paul balked. Erik ignored him, pulling up a chair.

"Exit out of this. Open a new page. Start a new one for me."

"You're outta your freaking mind!" Paul hissed, upset enough to almost curse. That was the closest Erik had actually ever heard him get. Even when Erik had been driving into him like a piston the man had only gasped, "Oh frick! Oh frick!" like some Girl Scout. The memory seemed to shake Erik back into reality, to the point where he could look at Paul in the face, that bland, do-nothing face, and  _think_. What he thought of was drastic, even downright nauseating, but it had to be done; he couldn't explain  _why_ it had to be done. Somewhere, deep within his chest, he just knew it was important.

"Listen, Paul," he murmured, putting his hand on the man's forearm. "I know...I know it was a terrible thing that I did to you. I can't explain why I'd do something like that to someone so sweet, so  _caring_." It was amazing how enraptured Paul could get about something Erik was literally making up on the fly, and yet Charles brushed off every genuine thing he said like it was a bald-faced lie. The wrong people in this world were too discerning; what he'd give for the universe to parcel out some of Paul's gullibility to Charles. "Maybe I was afraid, afraid of my  _feelings_ for you. Of how much I cared for you. I didn't know what to do, Paul. I ran away. It was cowardly, and I regret it; every day of my life I regret it!" Erik choked off there, as if he were too emotional to speak (although if he was choking on anything it was disgust), clutching his chest for good measure, and Paul clutched him as well.

"Oh Erik!" the man gasped, palms hot through Erik's shirt. "I knew it. I knew it had to be somethin' lak that! But you've obv'ously grown so much! If you can admit this then I know you're not the same man who wronged me! And obv'ously that stuff in  _The Sentinel_ is a load of crock; I don't believe a word of it. Sleepin' with some Hollywood strangur; I know you'd never do that ta me. Ta  _us_."

"What?" Erik balked, amazed and horrified by how quickly Paul could take something and run with it. Was he joking?

"You've matured naw. I really think we could make a go of it! A real go of it! Donchu see? Erik-- _now we can be together_!"

"Um...right...maybe," Erik cleared his throat. "But first: let's focus, please." He tapped the computer screen.

"Focus?"

"On...we've got work to do, Paul. It's very important."

"What could be more impornint than us?" Paul simpered, curling his fingers in Erik's hair. It took every ounce of self-control not to slap his hand away. It was going take a good romp in the hay with Charles to wash away the feeling of Paul's fingers on his scalp. He was wondering if this was really worth it now. He grit his teeth. It was.

"Listen, Paul," he said, glancing around almost nervously. "My work--everything relies on this. I can't trust anyone with this--no one but you. I know I can count on you, Paul. I know you won't let me down."

Paul's dull, murky eyes went wide with wonder, small mouth falling open with an ugly sort of looseness.

"Your...work? Relies on...a sketch?"

It didn't make any sense to Erik either, but he didn't let that stop him.

"Yes."

"Okay, then." Paul's tone was suddenly determined. "Let's freakin' do this!"

"No," Erik argued, reaching over to point at a series of disembodied mouths on the side of Paul's computer. "That one. More like that one. But...paler. Really thin, pale lips."

"Okayyy," Paul huffed, frowning. The face was suddenly getting there, making real progress, starting with the long angular planes, the turned-up nose, thin gray hair. Erik was beginning to shiver it was so close, the face gazing out of the screen at him the same way it had in his dream.

Once again he could feel the heat of his nerves, the rusty metal of the door against his skin, could see the darkness through the peephole, and on the other side,  _this face_.

"Water," he gasped, and Paul scrounged around for some, but his movements seemed confused, slow.

"Are you sure about this?" Paul asked, staring at the image with his head quirked to the side like a confused dog. "Gray hair? Who is this? What's this for?"

"Glasses," Erik suddenly remembered. "Add some glasses. And...the eyes are wrong. More...thin. And pale. Piercing. Smoky. Gray. Definitely, maybe gray."

Frowning closer, Paul peered even closer to the computer, making his changes.

Erik clapped his hands. "That's it! That's exactly it!" Paul's response wasn't quite as ecstatic as his.

"Oh you complete freakin' butt-head!" Paul shouted.

"What?" Erik balked.

"And here I thawt you'd changed!" the man cried, pulling on his bland, colorless hair. He immediately moved to slapping Erik's shoulders with weak ineffectual flutterings, like butterfly wings.

"Hey! Paul, Stop!" he complained, pushing the man's hands out of his face where they were obstructing his vision. "What are you fucking talking about?"

"There aren't any stupid glasses, there innit any stupid gray hair! What, tryina throw me off? So I wunnit recognize him? For what? Just to get some ennertainment while you wait fer yer boyfriend?"

"Paul," Erik gasped, gripping the man's wrists. "What are you saying? You--you know this man? You recognize him?" Erik's spine felt as if it were dripping in molten heat, but he didn't have time to tune into that right now.

Paul glared up at him wrathfully. "Of  _course_ I reconnize him," he snarled.

"Where? From where?"

Rolling his eyes and gritting his teeth as if he were fighting for the ability to not punch Erik in the face right then and there, Paul sneered, "He's in the captain's office. Why doan you go check? And kin'ly never talk to me again-- _ever_!"

"The office?" Erik looked towards it, but Mark and the captain must have been sitting down: he couldn't see them over the frosted half of the windows, certainly couldn't see a third person. Had there been someone in there when they went in? He hadn't noticed if anyone had been with the captain when he'd called Mark in. Was Mark in there right now with this man?

Without a word, completely forgetting about Paul, Erik stumbled to his feet, slipping closer step by step to the door, breath coming faster but not seeming to get anywhere it needed to go. He still felt light-headed, breathless.

Erik saw Mark, sitting small and miserable getting apparently berated by a red-faced Boomer. He glanced at the second chair, empty, and then around the room, searching desperately and yet anxiously for a third figure.

He found it.

Smiling down at him were those same thin, pale lips, there was that same turned-up nose, the glasses were missing, the hair and the face itself didn't look so old as he remembered, and the white jacket, they'd forgotten the white jacket, but it was the same man. But Erik stared with confusion, with dread, into those pale, unblinking eyes. Because he recognized this man, and not only from his dream, not only from his nightmares. And if he recognized this man, knew this man, had known of him almost his whole life, or certainly since he'd started school, then he wasn't sure what this meant for his sanity. Nothing good, most likely.

He backed slowly away from the door. The small eyes seemed to follow him, seemed alive despite the fact that they were absolutely not, hadn't been for a hundred years.

"Didju really think I wunnit notice?" Paul was hissing at him, and his skin was so shivering and oversensitive it was like he could feel the words scraping over him. "That painting has only been hanging in there since the place was built!" Erik shivered hard, feeling like he might throw up; the last thing he wanted to think of was that painting, the painting he himself had seen a hundred times in school, the painting of the man with the cold small eyes from his nightmares. "D'you really think I'm that dumb? That I wunnit reconnize who I was sketchin? There are blind people in this town who could still reconnize Governor Shaw!"

 


	45. Chapter 45

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Writing is hard. And slow. And holidays are time-consuming. And distracting. I'll try to do better! All I can say is trust that I would never abandon you or this story, slow as it is, and that when it IS finally finished you'll know it by the gigantic THE END I'll put there. We're probably about 60% done now (sorry if that's as disheartening to you as it is to me! What I'd give to be at 99%!) THANK YOU, all of you, for sticking with this beast!

Erik upended his shopping bag onto the counter-top, spilling groceries everywhere with a raucous, uncaring din that could only barely be heard over the blasting Golden Oldies he'd cranked up on the radio. Somehow the apartment seemed too quiet otherwise, his thoughts too close by. Frowning at his bounty, Erik reached his arms up over his head, stretching out his sore spine. but he stopped with a wince, rubbing the bruised line around his ribs where the bike lock had dug in.

Leave it to Emma to  _literally_ chain someone to their desk (well, desk  _chair)_ the moment production stalled. He'd known it had been a mistake to go back to work. You didn't run out on Emma Frost and then saunter back in thinking she'd forget it. If you ran out you'd better keep on running and never stop. He was lucky she'd come at him with a bike lock and not a shotgun.

The sick thing was how goddamned  _effective it_ was, so that he couldn't even be properly furious at her. He'd been sure he'd never be able to write another word about that damned house, but Emma had tackled him and chained him to that chair and told him she'd unlock him only once he'd given her a workable copy and she'd gotten exactly what she wanted.

Although Erik had whined and railed at first, sure that would be sometime next century, he'd soon realized she was not at all joking and, somehow, when his fingers touched the keyboard, when he closed his eyes and tried to float past the pain that seemed to pulse through his chest,  _words_ had come out. So long as he kept his eyes closed, kept his mind away, let his fingers do whatever they wanted without thinking about it, it had somehow equaled success. This must be what people meant by inspiration. When writer's block hit, something welled up inside and handled everything for you. Amazing.

Despite all ending well, Erik wondered if he shouldn't sue. Just on principle.

Well, maybe after dinner.

Erik organized the groceries, trying to figure out what he needed first. He still had maybe an hour before Charles and his darling sister arrived. That should just about be enough time, so long as he kept it simple. Toasted rosemary bread (store-bought, therefore easy) with warm goat cheese and grapes for an appetizer. Baked citrus salmon. He had bought an entire cake. Hopefully the leftovers in his fridge would be temptation enough to get Charles to come back.

Speaking of Charles, Erik took the extras he'd picked up for the man and moved them over to the coffee table. Boxer briefs to replace the ones Erik had borrowed, some more condoms (despite Charles' insistence on professionalism, he was  _sure_ they'd come in handy soon), and a fuzzy hooded sweatshirt they'd been selling at the check-out line which read  _I <3 Avalon, _exactly two sizes too big, that Erik couldn't wait to see Charles swimming in. He wondered if he should hide all this before Raven got there, decided that was the best idea he'd had all day, and stashed it up in his room with Charles' cleaned suit from the other day. When giving gifts he didn't think it was a bad idea to have a bed nearby, just in case Charles wanted to show his appreciation right then and there.

With that out of the way he could start quickly prepping for dinner—

But he only got as far as slicing bread what a  _thundering_ noise made him jump nearly out of his skin. In the silent gap between two songs, his door exploded into noise, rattling in its hinges as something massive pounded it.

Frozen, it took Erik a moment to respond, lunging for the remote and clicking off the music. At the same moment, the battering stopped. All was silence apart from the thudding of Erik's heartbeat in his ears. Yet above that he could make out the noise, the  _sense_ of a weight on the other side of the door, the shifting of a body, the scraping of feet.

He  _yelped_ as his phone vibrated in his pocket, knife clattering loudly on the countertop as it slipped out of his grasp. That allowed him to hands to scrabble and answer the phone.

There was no time to speak before a voice growled across the line, "Open the door."

* * *

The Oldies channel was back on but no longer deafening, so as Erik sipped his expensive wine he could still hear the quiet rhythm of slicing garlic, the thunking of the knife, Charles' deep voice humming along. The shock of it, the pleasant rush, hit him all over again as it had when Charles first walked in, and he stood there beaming like an idiot, unable to stop or control himself. _Deep breaths, bite the inside of your mouth, knock it off before he turns around and wonders what the hell is wrong with you._ Dragging himself back to Earth, Erik squeezed his eyes shut, giving himself a moment to wake up from this impossible dream.

But when he opened them again, Charles was still at his counter, his sister was still nowhere in sight, and the Lovegood file was sitting on the dining room table unopened. Although Charles had brought what Erik assumed was his work bag, he had yet to even unzip it. It seemed so much as if it should be a dream that Erik had a hard time believing that it wasn't, and so had to once again walk himself through the chain of events that led to this moment.

He still wasn't exactly sure how Charles had managed to slip his sister, who had apparently been fitting them for matching handcuffs all day. All Charles had said when Erik finally stopped panicking enough to let him in was that Azazel (who had apparently been smart enough not to leave Charles and Raven in the same town together unsupervised) had distracted her, and that Alex had had to be abandoned in the name of a quick getaway. Erik didn't feel bad; he was sure once the blonde realized his idol wasn't around to impress he'd turn off the computers and go home. If not, that was his own dumb problem.

Although he'd wrapped his head around how Charles had escaped, he still wasn't sure how to explain the rest of it. After welcoming kisses (and persuading Charles that even though his sister was not technically there to stop them just then, they did not actually have time to 'say hullo to Magnus') and then a quick recap of their days (terrible for both of them for reasons neither wanted to delve into), Erik had tried to improve Charles' day by handing over the Lovegood file, reasonably pleased with himself.

So it had been rather a shock when Charles, despite salivating and obviously itching to tackle the file away from him, turned him down.

"Save it," the man had gulped out, rather green in the face. "We can look at it after dinner."

Thinking it was because the file would take so long and they had hardly enough time to get dinner together, Erik had shelved it and attempted to divulge Emma's confession.

Doubly shocking, Charles had literally lunged at him and clapped his hand over his mouth.

"Later, okay? After dinner. It can wait till after dinner--two hours, yes, I can wait two hours. One and a half if we skip dessert. Well, maybe just a really quick dessert... yes. How long could it possibly take to  _eat_?" By then Charles was pretty much muttering to himself, talking himself down from a ledge, and all Erik could provide by way of help was distraction. He knew from experience working with knives was a good way to get one's mind off things.

Breathing in the smell of garlic and lemons and spices, Erik smiled, realizing that, for all intents and purposes, he could in fact believe in this. In Charles all to himself in his kitchen, humming to Oldies, shifting from bare foot to bare foot, Erik's black shirt pulling away from the knob of his spine, raising an arm to push his bangs away with his forearm as they quietly prepared dinner together. It wasn't dramatic; it wasn't flirting or fucking, it wasn't even  _talking_. But there was something sturdier, more substantial, more  _promising_ than any of that. It shone with an incredibly warming vision: the vision of a hundred, a thousand days of making dinner together, sipping wine in comfortable silence, an affectionate, indefinite  _future_. It was the kind of relaxed interaction that could sustain itself for years, that was too slow-burning to blaze out suddenly and irrevocably, and Erik  _loved_ that thought.

The thought was too exciting to remain stoic over, so Erik didn't try to remain stoic over it. Setting his drink down, he sidled closer and wrapped the brunet up loosely in his arms. Rather than balk or pull away, as Erik had half expected him to, as he was sure the Charles of yesterday would have done, this Charles leaned into his weight, thus brightening an already sunny moment. He liked the weight of the man pressing his weight against him, the heat that radiated off him, the scent of him, and most of all the way Charles didn't stiffen in his grip but cuddled back when Erik pressed into his hair, nuzzled into the space behind Charles' ear. Had he ever had so many signs all pointing with flashing lights at the same obvious answer?

"It could be like this all the time," he murmured, resting his head on Charles' shoulder, feeling the muscles there flex as Charles made his way, slowly, carefully, through clumps of garlic and dill.

"What could?" the man murmured back, sounding equally languid, like a cat in the sun.

"If we were dating, I mean."

Erik wasn't sure what he was expecting, really. Another miracle, he supposed. He'd racked up so many already, what was one more? He should have known better, as Charles' heavy breaths within his arms faltered and stilled a moment, as the man's hands quivered and then paused on his task.

Charles' bitter response cut through their idyllic repose: "It wouldn't be like this."

He pressed his hands against the man's stomach, wrinkling the fabric under his palms, momentarily chasing two minutes ago, wanting the mindless enjoyment of it. But people couldn't live like that: happy but thoughtless. Not forever. Wasn't it necessary to ask these questions, to have these conversations, to wash away the quicksand of ignorance and build on a solid foundation of understanding, of communication; wasn't that what it took to build something lasting? Good as two minutes ago was, he realized, it wasn't what he wanted, what he really craved. He wanted a future that two minutes ago could survive in. And that required hard conversations.

"Okay, so what would it be like then?"

Charles set the knife down with a clumsy clatter, quiet for a moment, as if corralling his thoughts. Or maybe damning Erik for not letting sleeping dogs lie. If he was, he didn't let it show. His voice, when he spoke was, if anything, too jaunty, like a mother claiming it was barely a scratch even as she called 911: "I wanted to talk to you about that, actually."

Despite his suspicions, Erik couldn't help but be intrigued. What could he want to talk to Erik about? Was the man finally coming around, even by degrees? Had he built up the nerve to thwart his sister the way he had Darwin? He moved to the man's side so he could analyze his face: pallid and nervous, the eyes bright almost to the point of feverish, but smiling brightly. Erik got the feeling Charles had a lot of practice with fake smiles: he was pretty good at it.

"I think I've come to the perfect solution, you see," the man said, and his voice was excited, happy, but his eyes didn't seem to follow suit. Erik was not relieved of his worry.

Slowly, he asked, "What solution would this be?"

"What if," Charles began coyly, brows quirking. "We  _didn't_ date?"

Erik simply stared back, perplexed. "What do you mean, 'if' we didn't date? We  _already_ aren't dating."

"I know, but I mean permanently. Well, not  _permanently_ , not that we're perma...I mean for the life of this...thing. For as long as... I mean, what if you could have all the things you want but without the pressure? The...responsibility?"

"What are you talking about?" Erik asked, because he had absolutely no fucking clue.

"I  _mean_ we could still see each other when it was convenient, still sleep together, but you wouldn't have to deal with any of the...negative aspects. Of  _actually_ dating, you know."

Erik's mouth went stone dry and suddenly attained a very bitter taste.

" _A fuck buddy?_ " he snarled. "You don't want to date me, you just want to  _fuck_ me?"

"No!" Charles cried, hands grasping forward and digging into his chest. "I would...I mean...we'd still be  _friends_ , I hope."

"So friends with benefits, that's what you want from me," Erik growled, twisting Charles' grip off him.

"This isn't coming out right. You're misunderstanding me," Charles huffed, as if Erik were doing it on purpose solely to annoy him.

"You're easy to misunderstand when you're not making any sense. A relationship in which you're friends with someone, sleep with them, but aren't dating them and are free to fuck other people on the side is called friends with benefits,  _Professor_."

"No, I mean, I wouldn't want to sleep with other people. Would you? I wouldn't stop you from sleeping with other people if you wanted to sleep with other people," the man said. Maybe it was the bitter, jealous way Charles talked about the possibility of Erik sleeping around, maybe it was a sudden rush of compassion, understanding the fact that Charles had no idea what he was doing or talking about, that this was a conversation he had never had before and was stumbling through blindly and clumsily.

Erik gripped the man's shoulders but was gentle about it, moved his hands up and pushed Charles' hair back and looked him right in the eye but not murderously.

"You want to fuck me?"

"Stop it," Charles grumbled, trying to shrug Erik's hands off him but Erik didn't allow it.

"Well?"

"You know I do," the man glared back.

"And you want to be my friend?"

A rosy blush darkened the man's cheeks, obscuring his freckles.

"Yes," he mumbled.

"Do you want to fuck someone other than me? Do you think someone could please you better?"

The man's eyes were dark, cloudy with lust, but no longer throwing daggers at him.

"No."

"Would you want me to fuck someone else?" and seeing the mischievous spark in Charles' eyes, Erik was quick to add, "And I'm not talking about a threesome."

After a pause, twisting his mouth, Charles shook his head.

"Then date me."

Charles rolled his eyes, pulling out of Erik's grip and pushing his hands away as too much distraction.

"But that's  _basically_ what this would be, only without the expectations. I mean if I happened to be in town or you happened to be in town then if we both wanted to we could get together, but you wouldn't have to go out of your way to be with me and if I wouldn't have to stop work to be with you."

Erik was about ready to rip his own hair out at this point. Or maybe Charles'. "I'm not  _asking_ you to stop work to be with me. And I  _want_ to go out of my way to be with you."

Charles practically glared at him, as if he were being purposefully obtuse. "Stop making fun. I'm being serious. And don't you see that this would be more practical? It's got pretty much everything you're asking for anyways. It would actually be exactly what we have now, just longer-term, prospectively."

"You mean confusing and dramatic and vague?" Erik grumbled. Charles pouted but there was something more injured than petulant in it.

"I thought you liked this?"

"No, I like  _you_. I like  _being_ with you. I want  _more_ of being with you. I want a concrete thing with you that I can rely on and wrap my head around. I don't want an ephemeral kaleidoscope of a relationship that leaves me as confused as I already am but  _constantly_."

Looking glum, Charles whined, "I'm trying to come to a compromise here."

"I have a better compromise," Erik said with a grin. Charles, luckily, looked harassed into automatic interest. "Just take me on on a probationary period. Just date me for, let's say, a hundred years, and if you decide it's not for you then we can go our separate ways, no hard feelings."

Charles laughed, and the mirthful sound of it drew Erik in like a siren. He slipped in close, an arm around Charles' waist, and spoke into his hair.

"I like you. I think you're amazing. I want to be with you. What's to compromise about that? What are you so afraid of?"

Maybe it was the proximity, the fact that Erik couldn't see his face, but Charles actually answered him.

"God, Erik, but you're setting me up for failure," the man said, pressing into his throat. His grip on Erik was tight, almost painfully so, as if Charles were the one in pain. "I get by on my own now. No one's disappointment can hurt me anymore. What you're asking...I can't go back to that..."

"Hey," Erik sighed softly, stroking his hair with his free hand. "You're not going to disappoint me, Charles. You could never disappoint me."

Charles' eyes, when he looked at him, were hard and unconvinced, like they could never be fully convinced.

"Excuse me if I'm not so eager to test your theory."

Erik looked back at him, carefully: the gently undulating hair, the dark furrow between his brows, his intense eyes brooking no argument. So Erik didn't argue.

Huffing a thwarted, amused breath, the shook his head simply with a smile and embraced the man. Charles was officially the most stubborn man he'd ever met, but if he wanted to be with Charles it meant being with all of him, including the maddening parts. So he put both arms around the man and held him to his chest and had to laugh at what a nightmare he could be when he refused to be convinced by convincing arguments.

"What's so funny?" Charles questioned, stiff in his arms, suspicious.

"You, you maddening brat. I've got the feeling you won't believe me till I've got two pounds worth of hard data and a well-written peer-reviewed article."

"Well," Charles mumbled, spine loosening by degrees. "It wouldn't hurt."

And as Erik laughed at him the man's arms, once plaster heavy at his sides turned to flesh and held him back, tight and almost sure, and they stood there a little longer, tangled like a knot that would never come loose.

* * *

Erik had bought his condo just a few years ago, and had used the rooftop patio a bare handful of times, mostly to get laid. He'd rather forgotten what it was like up here-the gentle breeze, the leafy trees and cookie-cutter rooftops dotting the scenery, the patio furniture he'd invested in years ago that apparently required no upkeep. One wipe-down and the set up with its wrought iron table and jaunty water-proof cushions (with matching sun umbrella), was nice, even impressive, based on his guest's compliments.

"The colors," Charles pointed out, brushing the palm of his hand lightly over the pillows at his side. "That's what really ties it all together."

"Absolutely," Azazel nodded, scanning the view, such as it was."The blue with the green scenery. Love it. You pick this out yourself?"

"Yeah," Erik said proudly, rubbing Charles' knee beside him where it was pressed into the outside of his thigh. The good thing about sitting on the bench rather than the metal patio chairs was that no cold, metal arms separated them from one another. Charles lounged beside him in an easy sprawl, touching innocuously, casually. Erik loved it.

Raven was less pleased.

"Yeah, yeah, gorgeous view. The weather is lovely. La-di-da," she sighed, rolling her eyes.

Erik hadn't realized until then, until the embarrassed quiet that followed, that the whole conversation, from start ("What a marvelous view") to finish (Azazel complimenting the combination of summer green and navy blue) was incredibly trite, even  _fake_. He was suddenly unsure. Did Charles actually like his view, with its black rooftops and city-planned treetops? Was Azazel really giving him credit for planning the coloring of the foliage? Or was it all a stop gap? A grasping at straws as everyone at the table counted down the minutes until dinner could be over, watching Raven like an explosive version of hot-potato and hoping she wouldn't go off until they were outside the blast radius?

Charles had helped him set the table up here, and hadn't balked when they set it for four, even though as soon as Raven burst in it was apparent by his reaction that he'd never expected her. Erik had been surprised all of a minute, before Raven couldn't keep her complaints to herself and the whole story could be pieced together by venomous asides. Charles had 'forgotten' to leave her with his address when he bailed, obviously hoping she wouldn't find her way. The fact that he'd let them set the table and hadn't said anything to Erik made him think that deep down the man knew that wouldn't be enough to stop her.

The table was silent as everyone besides Raven scrambled for a pleasant topic of conversation that wouldn't antagonize her, wouldn't cause anything to spontaneously combust under her fiery anger. Erik simply watched her from across the table as she glared daggers at her brother and sucked down wine in record time, wanting her to look at him so he could tell her by way of eye contact that she was being a dick, that this wasn't the way to get what she wanted. Charles had been having a great time till she'd shown up. They had recovered from all awkwardness. Erik was showing Charles how to bake salmon, which Charles had never done before. They'd joked about Erik's snoring and Charles' bed head as they set the table, Charles laughing and blushing and forgetting that life had ever fucked him up enough to think he couldn't be this happy all the time.

Erik didn't understand what she could find to be pissed about with that. Why walking in at that point of all points seemed to make her the angriest of all. If she wanted her brother to be happy and he made him happy, then what was the big deal?

Erik guessed an answer in pure cynical fashion. Charles being happy was all well and good, but it was nothing to  _her_ being able to make him happy, all on her own and with no primer. There was something flattering in the fact that she viewed him as such a threat to that, that she thought he was edging her out, overtaking her on the race to please Charles. No wonder she encompassed him liberally in her glares.

He was sure if Charles would give her any way in she'd tell them all about it. But from the moment she'd busted into their romantic dinner-setting with complaints and blazing eyes, he'd been shutting her down. When she growled that he'd run away from her like a toddler from a bogeyman he got into an involved discussion with Azazel about exorcisms. When she claimed that Darwin was right and sex was quickly ruining Charles' sense of work ethic (even Erik could tell she was grasping at straws when it got to the point that  _she_ of all people was disparaging someone's work ethic), he started quizzing Erik on his favorite childhood cartoons, making hilarious aspersions to the fact that anyone should have known Erik would grow up to be gay based on his love of superheroes clothed solely in loincloths. The more enraged Raven got, the more Charles insisted on ignoring her, like an unruly child who needed to be taught that her tantrums would not be fed into.

Eventually her hatred for this treatment overcame her jealousy of Erik, and Charles slowly garnered more and more of her nasty looks, especially as the wine continued to flow, to the point that now Erik couldn't even get her attention.

He, along with Azazel, could only sit and pray dinner would be over before she hurdled the furniture and straight up strangled her brother. Only Charles seemed to be oblivious to that fact, with his fun conversation pieces and involved discourse. But Erik had now known Charles too long to take him at face value, and he wasn't sure how much this blinding ignorance was genuine. He was pretty sure the people next door could tell that Raven was pissed. If Charles made it seem like he could not even hear his sister's snide sighs and furious fumings then it was truly an Oscar-winning performance.

"How was work?" Azazel offered finally.

"Good," Erik nodded, a blatant lie. He tried to think of something else he could add, more lies to branch off of, but they had been playing Russian roulette with the dinner conversation all evening, and it was bound to fall on the wrong slot eventually.

This, unfortunately, seemed to be it.

"Journalists," Raven snorted, finishing her wine in one gulp.

Erik wasn't sure what to say to that and was too suspicious that she was only waiting for a response to explode into a bitter extrapolation, which was perhaps why Charles attempted yet again to sidestep it.

"Who taught you to cook? This is marvelous," Charles commended over his salmon, tossing aside lemon garnish. But as the problem grew larger and larger the chances increased that it would not allow itself to be sidestepped. Still, Erik had to do his part.

"Mostly my moth-"

"I mean," Raven interrupted, with false joviality. "Fun aside, interesting ice-breaker: I thought  _lawyers_ were supposed to be the scum of the earth. Journalists are giving them a run for their money, right? There's a dinnertime conversation starter. Who most embodies pure evil: journalists or lawyers? I vote journalists, hand down. Charles?"

"Raven," Azazel attempted to forebear. But she'd been ignored all evening and the wine had apparently convinced her that she only had to tolerate it if she abided by the rules of a comfortable dinner.

"You can't tell me you disagree with me. I bet even Erik agrees with me."

"Damned if I do," Erik snarled. Charles' hand discreetly squeezing his knee under the table stopped him from continuing on. (Probably for the best. His next step was going to have been to call her a spoiled brat and tell her to get her own life and leave Charles his. In short, a textbook example of throwing jet fuel on a bonfire.)

"Do you cook often?" Charles asked innocently. Erik knew there were people who ignored problems even as they were staring them directly in the face, people who praised "Nice doggies" even as they were being eaten alive by jackals. But Erik figured Charles could teach even those people a thing or two about sailing blithely through adversity.

Just like that tenacious jackal, though, Raven refused to let go.

"I take it you saw the paper this morning," she said, putting down her wine and crushing her salmon with the flat of her fork in idle maliciousness.

"I write for the paper, so yeah," Erik replied, pouring himself another glass of wine. He got the feeling Charles would have preferred it if he had started of on an impromptu history lesson, apropos of nothing. Just filibuster until dinner was over and it was time to go back to the motel. Raven took the bottle from him and finished it off.

"There's more in the fridge, I'll run and fetch it," Charles said, making to stand, but Raven stopped him.

"Azazel can get it, can't you Azazel? Run and grab it."

"Oh, I wouldn't know where to look," the man claimed.

"Figure it out," Raven smiled sweetly, then turned the same falsely saccharine gaze on her brother. "Is something wrong?"

Erik bit his cheek: she'd caught him with his own trap. To refuse to play along would be to admit that there  _was_ something wrong, and that always seemed to be the hardest thing for Charles to admit. Impossible, even, apparently: he sat back down slowly, and Azazel stood up at the same time, casting Erik a warning glance before he stepped away in a clumsy rush. Erik was fairly sure he would  _sprint_ to the kitchen and back and keep his fingers crossed the whole way that both siblings would still be alive when he returned.

"So, this paper," Raven continued, turning to Erik like a snake. Charles, beside him, was stiff, unamused. His mouth was tight, and he'd taken to shifting the salmon on his plate rather than eat it. "What did you think?"

Erik shrugged, didn't answer.

"You must have an opinion."

"Nope."

"Some bitch says your ass is being pimped by your prim boss; that doesn't bother you? She says my brother is so desperate for a good fuck that he needs to bribe strangers into it, and you're okay with that?" If Charles wouldn't respond to direct attacks she'd have to go the round-about way. In spite of his fury, Erik couldn't help but be flattered that it worked, and worked so quickly.

"Leave him out of it, Raven," Charles said, voice low.

"Who the hell else am I supposed to leave in it, then? You won't even talk about it."

"Because there's nothing to talk about."

"I told him, all day long," Raven said to Erik, grimacing with a broken smile. "You can't let something like this go unanswered. Yes it's a shit paper in a shit town, but if  _they_ think they can get away with it just think of what the papers that actually matter might imagine they could get away with, don't you agree? You've got to protect yourself, and if he's too precious to do it himself, someone's got to do it for him, right Erik  _dear_? We shouldn't let her get away with, this MacTaggart broad, that's all I'm saying."

"Stop talking to him," Charles warned again, putting his fork down and looking his sister in the eye.

Rather than being pleased that he was now addressing her fully, she seemed further annoyed that a ploy that relied solely on Charles' protectiveness of Erik had actually worked. Her anger at being ignored was only surpassed by her jealousy of her brother liking anyone enough to face her head on. Go figure Charles finally faced her when she was at the height of her wrath.

Azazel entered again, red in the face and holding a bottle of white wine that was sweating nearly as much as he was. For the first time, Erik was relieved to see him.

"Here's that wine!" the man said cheerily, though he was panting. "Did you pick this out, Charles? It's a good year. Where did you manage to find it?"

"She said you'd do anything for a piece of tail. That someone could just dangle a cock in front of your face and you'd tell work to fuck off long enough for you to gobble it down. That doesn't manage to upset you in the slightest? That doesn't allow me to get pissed on your behalf?"

"Stop," Erik growled, but she ignored him.

"You don't care about my work," Charles said calmly, but his body was still a coiled spring on the bench beside him. "I don't see why you're so concerned with what a reporter writes or does not write about me. It's nothing to you."

" _You_  should care," Raven snarled, waving Azazel away as he tried to distract her with wine. "It should  _mean_ something to you. You should be fucking pissed. It's your livelihood."

"The station has a retinue of lawyers. If they have an issue with it they can sue her. What would be the use of getting 'fucking pissed' as you so eloquently put it? What exactly is it you want me to do? Burst into her office? Scream myself hoarse?"

"Or let me! I'm asking you to give a damn about something! I'm asking you to show some fucking passion for once in your life!"

This was too much. No one that had seen Charles argue about the validity of paranormal research could dare accuse him of not being passionate, of not giving a damn. The real issue was that Charles didn't care about what she cared about. She wanted to avenge him and put him in her debt, but he didn't want to be avenged and was thus thwarting her chivalrous goals. That was the only reason she cared at all about Moira's shit article. But Charles responded before Erik could accuse her of such.

"If you're an example of what giving a damn looks like, then I'll pass," Charles grinned sweetly, raising his wine in salute and downing the rest of it.

"Fuck you," Raven hissed and Charles twisted away like he'd been doused with water as Azazel yanked Raven's chair back and struggled to drag her away. "Fuck you! Just because I'm not a fucking robot like you! I'm allowed to have feelings! I'm allowed to feel some fucking wrath every now and then, even if you won't, you fucking monk! No!" She sobbed to Azazel, breaking down absolutely as he pulled her down the stairs to the main floor, shouting still. "He always does this! Why can't he just let me fucking help him? Why can't he be thankful to let me do what I'm good at and cut a bitch?!"

With her gone, Erik and Charles sat in marked silence, Erik due to absolute amazement and Charles because of overwhelming emotion. The brunet sat stiff as a metal shard, staring mutely at the table, every muscle in his body tightened, mouth twisted severely to keep it from any emotion it might like to show.

Erik struggled to think of something to say.

"Wow," he finally came up with.

Not his best work.

"I suppose you agree with her," Charles growled low in his throat. "I suppose you also think I should storm Moira MacTaggart's office and defend my honor with obscene language shouted at the top of my lungs."  _I suppose you've rethought me ever making you happy when I'm secretly capable of driving my tough-as-nails sister of all people to break down in tears and rage._

"Hey, if it doesn't bother you it doesn't bother me."

Charles snorted and glanced at Erik tensely from the corner of his eye. Obviously the man didn't believe him, so Erik followed it with: "You know what you really need?"

"A break?" Charles sighed, rubbing his brow one-handed. He looked exhausted for the first time in their long, exhausting acquaintanceship.

"No," Erik grinned, combing Charles' hair back across his skull with his fingernails. "A stiff drink and a good fuck."

Charles laughed out loud without thinking, caught himself and stopped, shaking his head, but he couldn't shake his smile.

Suddenly, as if he couldn't stop himself, Charles turned to him, took him and pressed himself into Erik's arms, into his throat. Although Erik was surprised, his body responded by instinct, holding Charles' back immediately, before his brain could even tell it to. The man's heart against his was still racing from his dramatic throwdown with his sister, the pulse hitting him heavily, like knocking on the door of his chest, but the body in his arms was lax, spent.

"Count me in."

Despite the drama of the preceding minutes, despite how very serious he should feel on Charles' behalf, Erik couldn't help but beam secretly, his heart buoying even as Charles' hit what was probably its low point lately. For once Charles had hit a rough patch, and rather than struggle and suffer through it on his own, he had decided to turn to Erik, and had not reneged on it immediately, thinking he'd made a mistake. He'd leaned on Erik for strength and not immediately thought better of it. And whatever troubles had led to it, Erik couldn't help but think it was somehow worth it, no matter the selfishness of such a thought.


	46. Chapter 46

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you find CSI too graphic this might not be the chapter for you.

Raven took a few minutes to compose herself before returning for dessert, and then Erik got to see how the siblings addressed their blowups: they didn't.

Raven slunk back to her place at the table with Azazel anxious at her side; Charles tensed noticeably beside him and didn't react to Erik's questioning touch to his thigh. Raven said the cake looked great and Charles asked if she wanted any and she said she probably shouldn't and he didn't insist or offer again. His voice was tight, but pretending not to be. Raven pretended not to notice. It had to be pretend. It was impossible she couldn't tell the difference between this monstrosity and his usual carefree gibbering.

Glancing between the two of them as Raven poured herself a glass of water, Erik hazarded a look at Azazel. But in response the man simply shook his head imperceptibly, holding a staying hand just above the table. Obviously Erik was not supposed to get involved, and honestly he wouldn't even know where to begin. Uneasily, he forced himself back from his taut perch on the bench, rubbing Charles' leg as much to relax himself as to relax the other man.

Conversation carried on half-heartedly, with Erik too busy waiting for one of the siblings to go for the throat again to offer anything by way of discussion. Although Raven had eschewed small talk when it was being used to thwart her, she was apparently all for it now that it was being used to sweep her outburst under the rug. She brought up good movies in the theaters at the moment, and then talented actresses, and then the appalling lack of female-driven films. Charles mentioned Gravity but Raven argued that Clooney had still made more money than Bullock on that, and Charles didn't respond even though Erik was pretty sure she was wrong, and that Charles knew she was wrong. The man apparently cared too little about the conversation to bother arguing, which Erik took as an obvious sign of intense depression since he was sure Charles' favorite thing on earth was to argue and argue articulately.

Long before the sun went down or the wine ran out, Charles claimed he was cold and suggested they call it a night.

"I guess we should be getting back," Raven sighed, stretching her arms over her head with a yawn, as if this were evening were so run of the mill, so ho-hum. "Thanks for the dinner."

"We're going to help clean up of course," Charles pointed out, a slight edge to his voice.

"Least we can do," Azazel agreed automatically.

"I didn't say we weren't," Raven snapped, but then blushed at her own shortness and did her best to out-carry everyone as they cleared the table. Erik was sure she was rushing on purpose, counting down the seconds until she could get Charles to herself, away from his bad influence, cajole herself back into his good graces privately.

He was more annoyed than surprised when she dropped all the dishes in the sink and then suggested to Charles they go for a walk around the neighborhood, get rid of some of those calories.

"I'll go too," Erik was quick to say. No way could she be trusted to be alone with the man after what she'd already done to him.

"Think, kitten," Raven simpered, tapping his brow roughly. "Who'd do the dishes?" He swatted her hand away. 

"Erik made that lovely dinner, "Charles complained. "He shouldn't have to do dishes on top of that. You and Azazel walk, we'll handle the dishes together." But Charles' great idea was met only with laughter by the other two.

"You, do dishes?" Raven cackled.

"These Xaviers," Azazel explained mirthfully to Erik. "They're worse than useless in a kitchen: they're downright dangerous."

"Fine," Charles said, cutting off Erik's argument that Charles had handled himself just fine in the kitchen earlier. "I'll be back soon."

Raven looked overjoyed, but Erik couldn't hide his dismay, his concern for the other man, already so much more distant and aloof than just an hour ago. He worried how much further afield Charles would drift after even just ten minutes alone in her grasp. He hoped it wouldn't be so far off that Erik couldn't bring him back.

"Are you sure?" he murmured to Charles, taking his arm and casting a distrustful glance as the woman as she tapped her foot impatiently in the doorway.

"I'm his sister!" she snapped at him, dragging Charles away like a toy she refused to share. "What the hell do you think I'm going to do to him?"

"What you just did do to him, or along those lines!" Erik snarled back.

"Come along, it'll be dark soon," Charles squeaked, even though it wouldn't be, tugging Raven out the door before she could rip out Erik's jugular as she'd so clearly like to.

"What the fuck?" Erik rounded on Azazel, baring his teeth. "How could you let her go off with him after all that?! You're supposed to be his friend! She's going to kill him!"

"Don't be dramatic," Azazel replied, scraping food into the trash. "Raven would never hurt Charles."

"You can't tell me that stunt at dinner didn't hurt him," Erik grumbled back, stalking to the window to see if Charles was sending out rescue flares yet. He didn't see anyone.

"Come on, leave them be," Azazel called him back. "I've been around the block a time or two. This is how it has to be. She gets frustrated, she blows up, they clear the air, things get back on track."

"Back on the same track," Erik complained. "Over and over."

"It works for them," Azazel shrugged.

"How does this work? How is this working for either one of them? How are either one of them happy like this?"

"What's your suggestion?" Azazel laughed. "They go their separate ways? Never see each other again? They're brother and sister. They're family. It's not pretty but it's for life."

Erik huffed, leaving the window only grudgingly. He couldn't think of anything to say to that.

The siblings came back as Erik was giving the counter its last wipe-down, Azazel starting the dishwasher. Erik knew immediately that nothing had been mended. Although Raven was smiling happily, her arm around Charles' waist as if they'd made up perfectly, the man was still stiff, closed off. It was instinct that did it, he guessed, seeing Charles like that, like a glass figurine at the edge of a tall table: he dropped the kitchen towel and reached his hand out and it seemed like before Charles had even registered it the man was already quickening to him. It seemed instantaneous that Charles was fit into the hollow of his body, face pressed against his throat for just a moment before he recovered himself, pulling back. Yet even after so short a moment, when he did pull away he seemed looser, more himself, even though Raven was watching their interaction with eagle-eyed alertness.

"How'd it go out there?" Azazel asked to break the tension, going over to his girlfriend and embracing her as well.

"Fine, of course," she replied defensively. "Just reminiscing about old times."

Erik couldn't imagine how that had gone fine. From what he'd seen so far, old times were the very last sort Charles liked to reminisce about.

"Well," Raven said with a joyful clap of the hands. "We should be getting a move on, eh? You've got a big day ahead of you. We should get you tucked in early."

Erik grit his teeth at her sudden maternal instincts, as if babying Charles made up for her attacking him, as if that was all that was required of her to be forgiven. You knock someone's teeth out, you kiss and make it better. All done. No wonder Charles couldn't stand to be around her.

"Sleep will have to wait," Charles replied, eyeing Erik in a way that felt purposefully provocative. The brunet turned to his bag as if it hadn't happened, leaving Erik thrumming and Raven frowning.

"Erik, if you could grab your laptop I want to go over those temperature fluctuations we were discussing earlier. I'm almost sure there was a discrepancy there, in the 13:24 mark, of at least a quarter of a degree. I think if we compare notes on a minute-by-minute basis we should be able to suss it out. Do you have that interview with Emma transcribed as well? We'll need to get that done. Have you got a scanner? I told Darwin I'd get him these graphs tonight. There's only about 100 of them, should only take a couple hours."

Erik could tell, because so much of it was fictionalized, that Charles was laying it on thick, although he wasn't sure why. He played along anyway, sure the ploy had to involve Raven somehow. Why the hell the man couldn't grow a pair and tell her to simply fuck off was beyond him, but he didn't think now was the time to argue with Charles about it. They must form a united front against this enemy.

"Did you bring the electrometer?" Erik supplied for his part. "I want to test its calibration before I go ahead and verify the data it picked up the other day, then I can graph it. Do you know if Darwin prefers arithmetic or object-oriented spreadsheets?"

"Ohh, good questions! Let's do it both ways and he can choose."

This was now too much for Raven.

"Oh come on," she laughed nervously. "You can't be serious. That...that'll take all night!"

"I'm sorry, Raven. We've got a lot of work to do," Charles shrugged, setting his laptop up on the coffee table and taking out a binder full of what looked like a series of line graphs.

She eyed them both suspiciously, but said nothing, obviously not wanting to antagonize her brother by straight-out accusing him of lying.

"Okay," she said slyly. "I'll help. What can I do?"

"You could work on that book plate I asked you to do yesterday. Or have you already done it?"

Raven frowned, saying nothing, and while Erik knew he should go and get his laptop to aid in their little skit, he wanted to see what she came up with when she came up with it. He glanced at Azazel as well, wondering which side he was going to take, but he seemed prefer a hands-off approach in this case. Erik got the sudden glimpse, the all-at-once realization of how hard it must be, standing guard over these two, wanting to protect them both from one another, never able to take sides. Azazel was Raven's boyfriend and Charles' best friend, or as best a friend as Charles allowed himself to have.

"Erik?" Charles reminded. He set off at a clipped pace, racing so as not to miss anything.

Despite his rush, when he returned Raven was sitting on the couch next to her brother saying something about Charles overworking himself, needing rest.

"I can rest when this is done, Raven," he replied at last, looking up from his work long enough to give her a serious gaze. "If you really want to help me, help me finish it. Do the book plate."

Raven didn't take him up on his offer right away, giving a lengthy pause.

"I could go get it," she decided excitedly. "It's on my laptop. I'll run back and get it, come back here. We can make a night of it. Like a study session! It won't take me fifteen minutes."

Whatever leveling Charles had been willing to offer had spent itself now. He'd tried and it had failed, in what was probably the millionth time in their long relationship. He didn't bother to try again, turning back to his computer once more, turned off, closed for business.

"Do what you want, Raven."

Erik had to remind himself that she was the enemy here, that she'd brought this all on herself, that half an hour ago she was screaming at Charles across a dinner table like a spurned housewife. It wasn't easy, though, seeing her sitting there beside her brother with that little-girl-lost look on her face, eyes sparkling with dismay. He had to fight the urge to go to her, put his hand on her shoulder and try to help her. _No, it's not fair that he's playing this game. He should just come out and ask you to leave him to it if that's what he wants, rather than playing this game. But you made this happen. You know what he wants, you just don't want to give it to him. You don't want to leave him alone._

She wasn't his responsibility. So he didn't say anything, only went kitty-corner to Charles and set up his own laptop. Let Azazel see to Raven.

Which he did. "I thought we were going to try to catch a movie tonight. At the mall, remember? Movie and drinks, right?"

"I don't feel like seeing a movie," Raven said petulantly.

Charles ignored her pitiful tone: "Erik, do you have that interview? We should transcribe that first off and get it to Darwin."

Erik rushed to follow orders. The busier they looked the more put out Raven seemed. She apparently realized they were not about to, at any moment, slam their laptops shut, tell her it was all a joke, and go their separate ways never for her brother to be seduced away from her again.

She stood dramatically.

"And even if I did," she claimed loudly. "I'm much too busy. I've got work to do too, you know. You two aren't the only ones who can be busy."

"Didn't claim to be," Erik muttered. She ignored him in favor of her brother, who seemed to think that positive reinforcement was necessary.

"Excellent, Raven!" he cheered, standing to help her with her jean jacket. "I really think that book plate is going to end up being very important. And I'm sure Hank or Darwin must have come up with loads of other things they need your...your expertise on!"

"God, I hope not," she grumbled back, letting him put her jacket on her.

"I'm sure it won't be anything you can't handle," Azazel assured. He added a wink to Erik, still hovering over his laptop waiting for Raven to change her mind and keep cockblocking him. "You two take care."

"Bye," Erik growled back.

"You'll be back soon, right?" Raven asked anxiously as her brother tried to shove her out the front door. "You won't stay up too late? Or...or exert yourself?" Her voice was grim with meaning and she shot Erik a black look. He was impassive. He didn't think her warning would have any impact on Charles, or the night they'd have.

"Yes, yes, of course," Charles coughed. "Come, before it gets dark."

"And you won't eat the rest of that cake he put in the fridge, will you?" Raven questioned on her way out the door.

"Absolutely not," Charles assured, waving them both away, giving Azazel a wry smile and a kiss on his cheek.

"Do get some sleep," Azazel suggested, ruffling Charles' hair.

"Yes, Dad," Charles teased back.

"Erik, thanks for the lovely dinner. We'll have to do it again some time."

"No time soon, I hope," Erik smiled with a simpering wave.

And then the door was shut on them.

Still, they both paused, Charles with his hand still on the doorknob, waiting for Raven to rush back in, throw open the door, laugh in their defeated faces. But there was nothing. Distantly Erik heard car doors opening and closing, and an engine starting up. Charles stepped away from the door, a stunned look on his face that bled readily into an encompassing relief that suffused into his whole body, the tense shoulders drooping, the taut arms relaxing.

"My god," the man sighed as Erik stood to go to him happily. "It fucking worked."

Charles emitted a sharp, jolted laugh when Erik jerked him up into a celebratory embrace.

"You picked a hell of a roundabout way but you fucking did it!" he cheered, spinning the man around once as he struck him on the shoulders.

"Put me down, put me down!"

When Erik did, the man was blushing up to his ears, clearing his throat as he righted his clothing. "Come on. I may have been laying it on rather thick, but we really do have work to do."

"Not just yet. I want to give you something now that your sister's out of the way."

 

"I know she told me not to exert myself but _yes please._ "

"It's not that kind of gift."

"Oh thank god, it's freezing here," Charles gushed when got his present, dragging the sweatshirt on first thing. Erik enjoyed the view as the man got stuck in the neck hole, his stolen black shirt riding up and exposing his pale stomach. Surely it wasn't _that_ cold in here, although he had to admit he did have the AC up pretty damn high.

"What's this?" the man asked, freeing himself and staring down at the writing, hood stuck half on his head, hair mussed adorably. "Har har," he added once he'd read it. I Avalon.

"Did some shopping for yourself I see," he gestured to the packs of boxer-briefs Erik had gotten as well.

Erik was still pretty sure it was very weird to buy another man underwear when they hadn't even known each other a week, but he'd already paid for them, so that deal was done.

"Um, they're for you, actually. Well, since I'm...actually I think I'm wearing your last pair as far as I could find last night. I'm sorry. Is this weird?"

"Very weird," Charles agreed, picking up the 3-pack and checking out the patterns. Erik thought they were nice, blue and white stripes, checks, solid blue; he couldn't wait to see them on. And then peel them off. "I don't think I've ever had another man buy me pants before..."

"Pants?"

"Sorry, underwear, right. Cheers."

"Mmm," Erik groaned, wrapping his arms around Charles' waist, nuzzling into his cozy neck. "Talk British to me."

Charles laughed, shaking in his arms, and leaned back into him for a second before pulling away.

"Come on. We've got work to do. These," Charles grinned, flicking the box of condoms Erik had bought but thought he'd put away. "Will have to wait."

"How long are we talking?" Erik asked as they went back downstairs, his hands on Charles' hips, feeling the muscles shifting provocatively with each step. Charles flipped his hood fully down and pushed Erik's hands away, but it felt playful, not his panicked rebuffs from yesterday at the lake or anything. If Charles wasn't used to the idea of dating Erik he was at least coming to accept the idea of him being around. Erik figured if he could make so much progress on point two in so short a time, he should hold out a lot of hope for an improvement on point one.

* * *

 

"A baby? Crying?" Charles questioned, notepad shaking under the intensity of his writing.

"That's what Emma said. She was in the bathroom and she heard a baby crying."

"How on earth could she know it was a baby?" Charles sighed, shaking his head.

"They are pretty distinctive," Erik pointed out. "You are aware of this, right? You have heard a baby before?"

Charles just scowled at his paper and kept scribbling. When he stopped writing he just kept on scowling, looking adorable in his gigantic sweater with the sleeves rolled up twice, the little line between eyebrows, chewing on his lips.

"They get there at 3:05 according to Darwin. She walks in," Charles said, obviously scrawling out a timeline. "They do a tour of the house. Not long. Five-ten minutes. Big group, hard to maneuver, we'll say ten. Emma leaves the group to go back to the bathroom. She hears the baby before or after?"

"I don't know. After I think."

"You think or you know?"

Erik rubbed his brow. "Fuck, Charles, it's been a long fucking day. After, it happened after."

" _You've_ had a long day," Charles muttered, rolling his eyes. Except Erik grinned to find that Charles didn't really roll his eyes, he did this thing where he widened them comically, brows jumping, mouth flattening.

"You're adorable."

"Stop it."

"What?"

"Puppies are adorable. Miniature baby elephants are adorable."

"Puppies, mini baby elephants, and you."

But Charles was done scribbling now, so chit-chat time was over.

"Where are those temperature readouts? The graphs?"

Erik found them in the bundle of props from their Get-Raven-to-Leave Skit. He sat there and looked pretty while Charles shifted studiously between his Emma notes and his pages and pages of graphs.

Deciding if he was going to be ignored he might as well be ignored from a good seat, he dropped down beside Charles on the couch, rubbing his back under his shirt.

"Stop that."

"I'm pretty sure you're capable of focusing on work even with my hand on your back."

"You overestimate me. Hands off."

So Erik took his hand off, a little bit flattered.

"Is there something I can help with? I could transcribe things or...input data. Anything?"

"Absolutely not!" Charles hissed, sitting up immediately, looking at him as if he'd just suggested they go shoot up the mall.

"Well excuse me!"

"No, it's just...I mean," Charles rubbed his eyes, trying to explain. "Look, I just...I thought you were done with this house? Never wanted to see hide nor hair of it again? Honestly, I don't want you getting involved in it again. Not with the way it's affecting you."

"Well what the hell am I supposed to do? Sit here and do my nails?"

Charles stared a moment at his papers spread across the coffee table.

"You're right. You're right, I'm sorry. This was a mistake. I should go back to the hotel if I'm just going to--"

"Hey," Erik balked. "I'm fine. See? Look at me. I'm fine. I'm not offering to go back there or something, just do a little grunt-work for you."

"There's only one sort of grunt-work I want you to do," Charles replied with that sultry smile. Erik ruffled his hair heavily.

"I'm fine. It's over." Except for the phone calls. Except for the mirror. Except for the dreams-the man in the dreams--the fire-- "Let me help. It's not going to kill me. And," he added, stroking Charles' thigh, the warm scratch of tweed. "the faster we slog through this the sooner we can go to bed."

Charles tried to pinch his smile closed but it won out and he ended up beaming.

"My sister did tell me to get to bed soon," he said. "I suppose I can find something for you to do."


	47. Chapter 47

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Warning for graphic-ness. Sowwy.

Erik sat on the couch cross-legged and opened the Lovegood file on his lap, flipping through pages randomly. He wanted work to do, this was the work Charles had for him to do. So he should probably stop wasting his fucking time and just fucking do it. Instead he sat up, moving his legs under him, leaning against the arm, struggled to read the first page, even just the  _very first page_.

No luck. His eyes slid, drifted to Charles sitting on the floor between the couch and coffee table, studiously shifting between his fifty sheets of graph paper. Maybe it was the silence, overwhelming and broken only by shuffling papers which sounded too much like whispers. Maybe it was just that he was still too amazed that Charles was sitting not one foot from him for him to do anything but just sit there and stare dumbly at him. Might as well just give in, really.

"Okay," he sighed suddenly, breaking the unnerving silence. "I can't stand it anymore. What the hell are you looking for?"

Charles glanced back at him for a moment, hesitant, deciding if he should lie. Apparently he couldn't find a need to.

"Well," he gushed, pulling all of his papers up into his lap and collapsing at Erik's side, nearly on top of him. The graphs had dozens of lines on them, and every now and then there were jumps or drops here and there, X'd out at their apex. Erik recognized the temperature graphs Charles had shoved on him just that morning. Of course it was madness to think the man had given him the sole copy. "When we first got to the house we set up the temperature meters," Charles explained, pointing out the starting point on the first sheet, spanning out it mostly straight lines. "Nothing much happened most of that time, with slight variances. Here are some slight temperature drops: this one in the kitchen, another in the living room. I hadn't set up the graph in the basement stairwell yet, that one starts a few pages later." Erik thought of the kitchen, of the glass of water that tasted like death. He thought of the living room, of the vent that had whispered his name. " _This,_ was the reading from the master bedroom that evening. Um...as you'll recall..."

"I recall," Erik croaked, cleared his throat. He wasn't terribly shocked. Charles had said basically the same thing at the motel before they parted ways that morning.

"We hadn't moved the graph to the bathroom yet, that comes a few pages later. Then, here, is when you were...when Darwin..."

"The stairwell."

"Right. Look:" Grinning, the man flipped pages and pointed out a spike in the temperature. "Heat  _spike!"_

_"_ Mmhmm."

"Here's where it gets really interesting," said Charles, spinning pages like a Rolodex. "This is Kitty's incident in the library."

"Another heat spike," Erik nodded distractedly waiting for this to be over. He wished he'd never asked.

"It's not just that!" Charles whined. "Look at the numbers!" Not relying on him to do just that, Charles read it to him. "130.8!"

Erik looked at him blankly, apparently driving Charles mad based on his aggrieved sighing. "It was only 128.9 in the basement, see?"

"The house is getting stronger," Erik said, remembering Darwin's text which he wasn't supposed to have seen in the first place.

"I didn't say that," Charles was quick to point out. Erik didn't bother explaining that Charles had done everything  _but_ say it. "It's all preliminary. Promising but preliminary. I just need time to  _think_ about it. I mean, I've seen temperature drops, and I've seen fluxes; some sites run hot and some run cold. But I've never seen both in one site, and certainly not like this. It's like..." Charles opened his palms and stared between them, obviously so far gone he was now seeing physical manifestations of his own brainwaves. "It's like we got there, everything was normal, then it started reacting to our presence, first with cold manifestations, then something triggered, changed, and since then it's only been registering hot, and increasingly hotter. And I mean  _only_. We haven't documented any cold manifestations since the stairwell incident. It's like the hot manifestation have  _overpowered_ the cold manifestations-" his brain overloaded with hypotheses at this point and he clutched his own skull. "Two completely separate manifestation in one site? Are they separate? Are they two halves to the same coin? If they're the same why has one half completely overpowered the other?"

"Okay, okay, calm down," Erik suggested, petting his head, afraid Charles' brain might be melting at this point. He was actually surprised it wasn't hot to the touch.

"I am calm," Charles snapped, swiping his hand away. He was too distracted to be really miffed though. "An experiment, that's what I need. Tomorrow, Alex and I, we'll set it up. I'll need volunteers. The house doesn't give sufficient response to our presence, okay, so someone who can trigger a response--hot  _or_ cold."

By all appearances Charles had completely forgotten Erik was halfway underneath him, he just kept gabbing on, eyes flashing, hands twisting this way and that. It should have been annoying, being ignored like this, but the man was just too damned attractive for his own good and it was strangely erotic instead. Leaning over, he kissed the man roughly on his scruffy jaw.

Charles, thrown back into reality so abruptly, blinked at him a moment, his cheeks darkening before his spluttering could catch up in expressing pure embarrassment.

"Hey, none of that now, I'm working."

"I know," Erik laughed. "I like it."

"Sure," Charles said, rolling his eyes for real this time and shifting away, returning back to his place at the coffee table.

"I mean it!" Erik teased. "You're very passionate...it's almost  _sexual_."

"Shut up," Charles said, hitting him on the knee, but he was smiling.

Erik leaned forward and murmured directly into his ear, caressing his throat, "Bring those graphs to bed tonight."

"Stop it, I mean it," Charles laughed, twisting half-heartedly in his grasp.

"Okay, okay, I'll change the subject: how do you like this weather we're having? How was your day?"

Charles didn't joke back, and took too long to answer seriously if he was taking him seriously, so that Erik was waiting for the subversive portion of his answer and wasn't as surprised by it as he could have been.

"My day was fine. Went to town. Got the car. Oh, I stopped by the hospital, met with Mrs. Hudson, made sure she's doing okay. She's fine--was being allowed to go home tonight or tomorrow, I forget. By the way, do you remember a doctor there? Doctor Franklin?"

There it was. "A doctor? At the hospital in the city?" He had technically been there once, when he'd broken his leg, but that was years ago and he'd only been sixteen, not of an age to take down names or see them on bills or anything. He really remembered very little about it all, other than that it was very unpleasant.

"Yes, I ran into him in the lobby and we got to talking and I mentioned you...he remembered you quite well."

Erik shook his head; he didn't believe that at all. There was no way Charles just happened to run into the doctor that just happened to treat Erik all those years ago, although he wasn't sure how Charles would have accomplished this without some level of fate, of coincidence on his side. Erik didn't even remember the doctor's name--how could Charles have deduced it? "I don't see how he'd remember me. That was like ten years ago."

"You left quite an impression."

"What, he'd never seen a broken leg before? My god, with the number of meth lab explosions in this county I'm sure he's had more interesting cases than mine."

"It wasn't so much the broken leg as the... the screaming."

Erik was shocked silent, as Charles must have known he would be because the man didn't look up at him, continuing to stare at his papers as if he had no clue the impact his words had had. It was a paltry game of pretend and as Erik's silence expounded, he hazarded a glance, took in Erik's complete surprise.

"You really don't remember?"

Erik's words escaped him breathlessly. "What did he tell you? What did he say?"

Charles turned towards him, rubbing his knee with concern, tried to pick his words carefully. He could barely feel the man's touch, his skin was tingling and flushed with heat. He felt far away and feverish and wished this topic had never been started on, but it was too late to go back now-now he had to know it to the fullest.

"He just said... Well that he had just started and you were one of his very first cases and so he was very nervous of course, as people new to a profession are likely to be. And you were so young, so of course that made it more difficult, you know, you don't want to hurt a child especially, not that one would want to hurt anyone of course but you know what I mean." The man was babbling. He'd brought this on of his own volition, but he'd done in blindly, not knowing what Erik's reaction would be. He apparently hadn't meant to bring drama like this on his head, but it was too late for that now. 

" _What did he_ _ **say**_?"

Biting his lip, Charles answered. "He said when he went in to see you your father had stepped out and you were...very upset that you couldn't find him. You...he  _said_ that you grabbed him."

"Grabbed the doctor?"

"And said...and asked him not not...not to..."

"Not to  _what_?"

"Not to kill you."

Erik was surprised, of course, but his surprise was overwhelmed immediately by the pain that exploded through his chest, driving him immediately to his feet where it disappeared as quickly as it had come.

"Erik!" Charles cried after him, climbing up his body until he could get his feet underneath him

"I'm okay, it's nothing," Erik bit out, rubbing his chest. But there was no pain there now to rub away. Its memory survived only in his mind. Which left him more flummoxed than anything.

Charles, still panicking, probably did not hear his protests. "I'm sorry! I'm sorry!" the man was exclaiming loudly, holding him. "I shouldn't have said anything. Forgive me, forgive me."

"Hey, hey," Erik murmured, holding the man back though his limbs were shaking, felt a mile off. "It's nothing. It's nothing. Just--heartburn." Just suddenly appearing and then disappearing pain. Phantom pains. Possible insanity.

Charles stared up at him, concerned and not completely convinced. "Are you prone to that? You...at the house yesterday as well..."

Erik wasn't, he'd never had heartburn before, wasn't even sure what it was supposed to feel like, but what else was he supposed to tell Charles?  _Welp, if it's not that then I'm probably imagining it and/or completely losing my mind._

"I'm fine. You surprised me, that's all."

"I'm sorry. I thought you'd have remembered it. Maybe some school-hood prank or paranoia since your mother hated doctors so...But you really don't remember?" Charles asked, eyes bigger and bluer than ever.

At Charles' instigation Erik did his best, wracking his mind. But it was all so long ago, and so mixed up, and he'd been in so much pain. It was difficult to piece it together. Some things at least he was sure of: he was playing soccer, he'd gotten slide tackled and heard a snap, stayed on the ground where he'd fallen and everyone had known something was wrong immediately. He hadn't started to panic until he realized he'd have to go to the hospital. His father hadn't been at the game, off on some job or another, but Erik's coach had called him and told him to meet them at the hospital. He didn't remember now who'd driven him, only the pain and lying in the back of someone's minivan until they arrived at the hospital, groaning at every bump in the road.

Beyond that it was a whirlwind.  _You're going to feel a pinch. One, two, three..."_  The pain, the confusion, wanting his father, his mother.

Afterwards he'd got a cast and his dad had signed it but he knew that only because he'd seen it later, he didn't actually remember him doing it. He remembered stopping at McDonald's to buy soda and a burger to take his pain meds, falling asleep during whatever movie his dad had put on for him and waking up for the credits.

"He's got to be wrong. Maybe he's thinking of someone else," Erik decided at last. "I mean I know I don't remember every little detail of that day, but I just think I would remember something like that if I had done it. I mean, grabbing a total stranger and begging him not to  _kill_ me-I just wasn't that kind of kid. I was shy, I wouldn't have just grabbed a random guy. And to say that out loud to someone. I would have been mortified for generations to come. I could have forgotten a lot of stuff but not an embarrassment like that."

"He said you seemed very frightened...who knows what one would do in a situation like that?"

Erik didn't know what to say to that. Of course he was scared; he'd had his leg broken, he was just a kid, his father wasn't there to comfort him, his mother was dead by then and wasn't there to take care of him, he was being brought to the hospital, which he'd always been brought up to fear. Just because he was scared didn't mean he'd do something like that. Saying something like that out of fear would have made him  _more_ embarrassed,  _more_ likely to obsess over it constantly. God, he'd barely gotten to the point where he could stop beating himself up on a daily basis about breaking down into hysterics on the school field trip when he was six. His mother had had to come pick him up from the historical center. To this day he was the only child in the hundred-year history of the play's production to ever be physically removed from  _The Sanctimonious Life of Governor Shaw_ for completely losing his shit.

"He must be mistaken. He must be."  _I wouldn't forget that._

Charles didn't argue with him, but Erik got the feeling it was more because he didn't want to distress him with more proof rather than that Charles agreed with him. Still, he didn't press the man. He could live with ignorance on this topic-he wasn't sure he could live with the alternative.

* * *

They took a break, in which Erik downed twice as much Scotch as Charles, and Charles tried to convince him once more to forget it, call it a night, get to bed.

"You'll be joining me?" Erik asked, knowing the answer, putting the Scotch back. It had calmed his nerves enough to be so cocky.

"You know I have to work to do," Charles grumbled back, fiddling with his own cup before putting them both in the sink.

"Then let's get to work."

"I'll leave, I really will," Charles threatened. "Remove temptation."

"Just try it," growled Erik, pinning the shorter man to his side.

"You're such a caveman," the man groaned, rolling his eyes. Did he pick and choose when he did it for real and when he faked it or was it a completely unconscious gesture? "What are you going to do? Throw me over your shoulder?"

"I thought you were trying  _not_ to tempt me?"

"Fine, then. Back to work, harlot," Charles grinned, walking him backwards to the couch by way of two arms tight around his waist.

Round two was much more enjoyable than round one. Whether because Charles felt bad for earlier or because he'd finally relaxed after his amped up tussle with his sister, he was a lot more cuddly. When Erik sat back down to the file he had to make room for Charles as he decided to lie down, head in Erik's lap and his computer across his hips as he took up the remainder of the couch with his sprawl.

"Hank finished with the audio!" Charles exclaimed, ignoring Erik's surprise and plugging in his headphones. He couldn't tell if the man was distracted on purpose in order to ignore him or if this was an unsuspicious sort of distraction. No use trying to figure it out.

Charles was completely absorbed in his screen, but Erik found that any annoyance this could cause was mitigated by the man lying on top of him. He liked the weight of the man's shoulders along his thigh, his hoodie bunched up under his head, liked that he could reach out right there and stroke his fingers through the man's hair. It somehow made it easier to focus on his reading, as well, even if he couldn't wield a pen like this. Oh well, he was good at mental notes.

_December 9, 2001_

_911 transcript_

_4:59:05_

**911:** Shaw County, please state the nature of your emergency.

**Male Caller:** Yes, hello, can you send someone to my house, please?

**PD1:** Sir, is this an emergency?

**Caller:** Yes.

**PD1:** Sir, what is your emergency?

**Caller:** Oh, yes, sorry, my baby isn't breathing.

**PD1:** Your baby isn't breathing?

**Caller:** No, I don't think so. Honey, is she breathing? / _Indistinct sobbing./_ No, still not breathing.

**PD1:** Well is she choking? Tell me what's happening.

**Caller:** Well, my wife is the one who found her. She put her down for a nap a while back and just went to check on her and apparently she wasn't breathing. We're not exactly sure why. Randomly I guess.

**PD1:** Okay, sir, I'm going to get an ambulance to you, I need your address.

**Caller:** Oh, yes, duh, I'm so used to everyone knowing. It's the Gone-Away House. Or the Ash Creek House, if you prefer.

**PD1:**...The...the Gone-Away House? Mr. Lovegood, is this you?

**Caller:** Yessiree.

**PD1:** O...Okay, I'm...I'm going to walk you through this, Mr. Lovegood. While we wait for the ambulance to arrive. Do you know CPR?

Erik gulped and shut the folder, staring at the cover with its scrawled police notes. God. And everyone had thought the mom had done it. How much weirder must she have been? Erik had always heard that Mr. Lovegood was a complete fucking loon, but hearing it and seeing it written down like that was way different. He couldn't imagine what that 911 operator must have been thinking. No wonder the rumor mill had started churning double time. How could it not with witnesses like that floating around?

Recovered, Erik flipped through to the autopsy pages. There was a useful synopsis that laid everything out pretty succinctly, maybe he should make a copy of it for Charles. Mrs. Lovegood laid the baby down around 3, checked on her at 4 and everything was fine until around 5:30 she thought she heard something on the baby monitor and went to check again and the baby wasn't breathing. They called 911 and tried CPR and when the ambulance arrived the EMTs tried CPR but the doctor determined her DOA at the hospital. The rest of it was a mixture of creepy and bland.  _Decedent is 9-month old white female. Decedent was wearing white onesie with pink trim and pink floral pattern. Head is normocephalic and covered in 2-inch blonde hair. Ears are symmetrical and unremarkable. There are no significant burns or scars. The body cavities are entered through coronal incision and the standard Y-incision._

At that point things got decidedly non-standard, moved firmly away from unremarkable. Cutting into the girl's trachea, the first thing the coroner found was a "dark substance," thick and clumpy, clinging, sodden with mucus. It was the same in her lungs. Someone had written in, beside the neatly typed sentences " _Ash"._ Summed up in the end the author had typed  _Apparent smoke inhalation._ Someone else had crossed it out and scrawled  _No burns. Lungs not damaged. Clothes don't smell like smoke...?_

Erik shut the file again, staring at the floor.

_What the fuck._

Shifting, rubbing his aching chest, Erik tried to think. But the problem was like a hard nut, he couldn't crack it and found himself simply turning it over and over in his mind. It was knocked out of place by another problem.

He realized Charles had stopped moving completely.

Erik's heart stuttered a step as he looked down with a jolt. But the rush of panic seeped back out of him immediately. Charles was lying there, head tilted gently to the side, his eyes closed peacefully, his mouth closed but soft, like a very serious-looking toddler. The man was completely asleep.

Smiling, pushing the case file off to the side, Erik slid his fingertips through Charles' hair until it hit the heavy band of his headphones. Step one: get those things off. Reaching over with both hands he pulled both sides away at once, putting them aside, but of course nothing with Charles was that simple. The man woke with a start, twitching hard and yanking the headphone cord right out of the laptop.

The room was flooded with the noise, the faint squeaking, of a screw coming loose.

"Sorry," the man mumbled, pausing the audio file and rubbing his face. He sat up off of Erik, which he did not approve of. "I've been trying to figure that sound out. Guess I fell asleep."

"Is that the audio Hank was working on?" Erik asked, rubbing Charles' back under his sweatshirt. The man nodded, scrubbing his hands through his hair.

"From your H2. It was all a jumble but he separated out the individual noises. Now it's just figuring them out." The man looked at his computer again, stretching his spine. "Maybe a mouse? Maybe Ash Creek House is infested with mice..."

"Sounds like a screw to me."

"Ha ha."

"Not that kind of screw!" Erik said, smacking the man's side lightly. "I mean an actual metal screw, being screwed. Unscrewed."

"Stop saying 'screw'," the man yawned, turning around and lying down in Erik's lap again, nuzzling and closing his eyes against his stomach. "You're giving me ideas I'm too tired for."

"Time for bed?" Erik questioned with a smile. He liked the silky feel of the man's hair between his fingers. Charles groaned and blinked against his T-shirt.

"I guess I  _should_ get back to the motel," he mumbled half-heartedly.

"Fuck that."

"First screwing now fucking. Seriously,  _stop_."

"Tired driving is worse than drunk-driving. I don't think we can risk it. Your sister would agree: safety first."

"She wouldn't but I'm officially too tired to worry about it. To bed, Mr. Lensherr."

 


	48. Chapter 48

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This isn't actually a new chapter, but somehow or other the real chapter 44 got left out, so I had to go back and fix that :( Sorry! But now you can go read the chapter 44 that should have been there all along! Hope things make more sense now!

Erik knew he should tell Charles about the Lovegood case, about the autopsy results, but he couldn't say that knowing that made him try especially hard to actually do it. It was just that he had to find Charles a toothbrush (thank god dentists handed out handfuls of them at a time) and then they had to find Charles' pajama pants and when he was brushing his teeth Charles came up and laid his head on his back and just rested there a moment. And really, climbing into bed together, the man was too tired to deal with that sort of information, would only jump up gabbling about making notes or calling the team or some ridiculousness. It was much better just to strip down to his T-shirt and boxers and cuddle up to the bundled man.

"You're going to freeze to death," Charles warned him.

"I've got you to keep me warm," said Erik, wrapping his arms around the other man.

"No," Charles mumbled, rolling his shoulder to dislodge Erik's head. "I can't sleep like that. I need room to move."

"Who's sleeping?" Erik mumbled back, already halfway there, putting his hand in Charles' sweatshirt pocket, not because he was cold, but because it made it easier to tug the man even closer.

"Mmm," the man hummed back, for the first time ever too tired to argue. After a moment he followed up with: "I don't think I've ever slept with a man without sleeping with a man."

Erik woke himself only just enough to answer. "What are you talking about? We didn't sleep together the first time we slept together."

"That doesn't count," Charles insisted. "I knew I'd fuck you first thing in the morning."

"You cocky bastard," Erik grumbled, headbutting him gently. "Are you calling me easy?"

"If the condom fits."

"Har har har. You're hilarious."

"I'll be here all night, folks." And Erik smiled because he  _would._

They succumbed to silence, sleep catching up to them. Erik's arm started to tingle and Charles' hoodie was directly in his face. Groggily, he relinquished his hold and turned over, working his pillow into the perfect position.

He was surprised when Charles turned with him, sidling up behind him, putting an arm loosely around his waist.

"Is this okay?" the man asked, his breath warm and humid through Erik's T-shirt, so quietly Erik wouldn't have been able to make it out if he hadn't stopped breathing already.

He relaxed, beaming into the darkness, rubbing Charles' hand over his heart.

"That's perfect."

For all the joys immediately leading up to it, Erik's night was actually complete shit. Nightmares spurred him at a whiplash pace, spinning him from scene to scene. As soon as he woke from one he fell into another, all the way till morning, tossing and turning, gasping, waking with jolts and thrashings, falling back to a barely-there, restless sleep. Not the best audition as Charles' potential future bedmate.

In his fitful dreams he was playing soccer and the other children chased him, pinned him down, broke his leg with their sharp hands and he could feel it all: the racing of his heart, the impacts of his footsteps ricocheting through his body, the clutch of others' hands on him, the snap of his bone. He was at the hospital, his sweat sticking him to the exam table, screaming for his father. His cries were answered, his father's voice echoing--but it was coming from under the floor. He looked and saw three deep wells between him and the door and heard his father's voice weeping from one, and he realized he was shackled to the table. He was at the bottom of a pit, in a circle of light and cold. High above him the light reached out for him, but he couldn't reach back.

The place was silent as a grave, and indeed the more he thought about it the more it seemed it was a grave, his own grave. He had to get out, out of here, up towards the light, up towards life. He reached a hand out, preparing his climb, but instead of wall it met only air, slipped into a darkness so encompassing his limb seemed to disappear completely. It seemed as if the darkness should be cold, cold _er_ , but it wasn't. It was  _hot._ He yanked away, falling backwards with a cry, stumbled, fell, was blinded by darkness and heat, smoke filling his mouth and eyes, scratched his way out of it and laid panting and keening in his safe little circle of light, shaking, shivering, coughing.

His cries, breathless and whimpering, echoed all around him, seemed to encroach upon him, press back against him. He choked for breath, struggling to control himself and finally clapped his hand over his mouth to ensure it, cutting off all noise. Or, it  _should_ have cut off all noise.

Instead it continued on, a loose approximation of a breathless crying whimper that turned into a mocking laugh.

Erik silenced himself in a moment, staring into the dark. It was impenetrable as ever, he saw nothing, but he thought he felt it,  _knew_ he felt it, that same presence, that same monstrous  _man_. From the stairwell. Erik eased up, slowly, to his feet, cautiously, eyes wide on what he couldn't see.  _Who_ he couldn't see.

Around him, circling, came a soft  _tsk tsk tsk_ ing. Erik's shivering continued, but it had nothing to do with the cold as any chill was slowly giving way to a heady, stifling heat. A thick, noxious smoke snaked around his ankles, and there was nowhere to back away  _to_. No safe place to escape.

There was movement in the dark, faint, approaching closer. He wanted badly to turn away from it, run if it was possible, but a heaviness deep in his chest kept him stubbornly weighed in place.

A figure became apparent in the shadows. Erik checked around him quickly and slipped to the edge of the light, knowing he could go no farther. He watched, panting, every muscle tensed, saw the white angles of shoulders, gray stilts of legs slicing closer. He could hear the footsteps approaching. God what would he give for another inch of backward space to be available to him.

It was then that the man stepped close enough to see and Erik did see him, saw him and recognized him and woke himself up.

It was with overwhelming relief that he saw the dim light of pre-morning, realizing day had come, that he could stop torturing himself with sleep. He felt as if he hadn't slept at all, as if he'd spent the night being pitched back and forth between a circle of bullies rather than slept a wink. Although he didn't feel in the least bit rested, he was glad to face the day, which, no matter what it may contain, would at least be free of cartwheeling nightmares, and that man.

_That man._

That was the last thing Erik wanted to think about, it was the last thing he wanted to do, to drag his nightmares into his waking hours. Much better to focus on  _this_ man _._

Charles hadn't been awakened by his tossing and turning, and was still deeply, adorably asleep. Just the sight of him managed to unclench Erik's spine. Charles was splayed out on his back, the dark hood of his sweatshirt bunched up under one stubbled cheek, his hair all mussed and splayed out across Erik's pillows. As with last night, Charles slept with his mouth severely closed, so that Erik could almost think he faking it, was secretly awake. But too many other things countered such a thought: the thoughtful line between the man's brows was smoothed out, his breaths were heavy and even. If he was dreaming it was about something pleasant, like floating on clouds or swimming in warm, calm waters.

Erik was disgustingly jealous.

Sliding even closer to Charles' warm body, he untangled his hand from the bunched up sheets and found the hem of Charles' sweatshirt under the covers, feeling his way over the waist of flannel pajamas, warming his fingers on Charles' smooth, flat stomach.

Charles' reaction was a deeper breath, his body expanding against Erik's palm, a slight twitch of his lips, a tensing of his brow. It was selfish, and yet Erik didn't feel bad waking him up. He needed company, another person awake and with him to drive away his nightmares. Curling up at the man's side Erik kissed his jaw gently where it peeked above the heavy folds of his sweatshirt. He moved again, higher up, just under the man's ear, adding one just behind it, then up into his hair.

Charles stretched under him like a cat, every limb seeking its limit, joints popping.

"Mmmm, careful," the man mumbled, hardly awake yet. "I could get used to this."

Erik shook his head in order to brush his eyelashes across the man's stubble, feeling the catch. He wondered vaguely if Charles was talking to him or to himself.

"Did you sleep okay?" the man asked next. "You were tossing and turning all night. Talking in your sleep."

"Did I say anything interesting?"

"Do you ever?"

Erik bit him for that, gently though.

Charles shrugged him off, jerking his head away weakly, still only just considering being actually awake. "What time it is?"

"My phone's still downstairs." Hidden under a chair cushion where its near-constant buzzing couldn't annoy anyone. He'd forgotten to charge it. Maybe it'd be dead by now and he wouldn't have to hide from it any more. Maybe whoever was calling him had stopped and he wouldn't have to hide anymore. Except  _the house_ was calling him, and would never stop. No, that was insane--houses couldn't call anyone.

He managed to stop being insane enough to realize what he'd said and tacked on quickly, hopefully before Charles had formed any dumb ideas about getting out of bed: "It's still early though. Sun's hardly even up."

Charles seemed to believe him. Rather than wrestling himself headfirst from the bed and out the door, he turned and snuggled in closer, their foreheads nearly touching. Without opening his eyes, he stroked Erik's side for a second, soon fumbling to a sleepy stop. Erik knew he hadn't fallen back asleep though. Relaxed as his face was at the moment, Erik could tell the difference, could almost feel the motor of Charles' mind warming up for the day. In the meantime, he simply enjoyed the man's warmth in the circle of his arm, the sight of the dim light catching on his red-gold stubble, on the dark shadows of his ridiculously sleep-mussed hair. His freckles were more obvious this close up, and whether for sleep or too much sun yesterday, his cheeks were deeply rosy.

Much as he wished they could lie there like this forever, Erik knew it wouldn't last, and it didn't. In another minute responsibility had waded its way into Charles' brain once again.

"I've got to take a shower," the man grunted. "Shave."

"I'll join you."

"At the hotel, I mean. My razor's there. Clothes. Got to leave time for a Talk. Raven is definitely going to give me a Talk."

"I've got a razor. Your suit from your first day is still here. Nice and clean. You're welcome, by the way. Stay"

"My work gear is there. Got to go."

Erik didn't have an argument for that. Could Alex stop by the hotel and get all the gear? Would he know what to get? Erik thought there was at least a chance he might, but suspected it would be a bad idea to try. Charles had been intense enough yesterday when he'd thought Erik was going to put up a fight about work. He didn't want to risk anything like that again. And he suspected that once Charles did understand Erik wasn't going to be the death of his career, the man would be effectively convinced to date him already. And why fight him and make a big uproar? The man was still just lying there pleasantly in his arms, palm warm on Erik's side, shifting his legs to tangle with Erik's, a vision of romance. There didn't seem to be a big impetus to piss him off just now. Better to lie here and enjoy it while it lasted.

"Do you know a Mr. Frog?"

Romance suddenly diminished.

"What?" Erik scoffed. Charles opened his eyes at last, just enough to look a little sheepish.

"Or...Mr. Green? Kermit?"

Erik had to laugh. "What the hell are you talking about?"

Charles punched him lightly, burying his face in his shoulder, aggressive with embarrassment.

"Don't laugh. It's Mrs. Hudson's fault, anyway."

"What now?" Erik asked, settling further onto his back where Charles had pushed him, running his free hand through the man's wild hair.

"Nothing, she just mentioned that he was...was sort of an unofficial expert on the house. Outside of the Historical Society, I mean. She said I should get in touch with him, for more information on the house."

" _Mr. Frog_  is an  _expert?_ Where at? Sesame Street?"

"Well she wasn't sure of the name. She only thought it was Mr. Frog or something like that."

"She's pulling your damn leg. There's no such person."

"You can't know every single person in this town, I don't care how small it is."

"You underestimate me, Mr. Xavier," Erik said in his best gravelly voice, grinning. Charles smiled back at him in the moment before he kissed him.

Erik couldn't hide his surprise, although he wasn't sure why he should be so surprised. Maybe because Charles seemed to pick and choose when was and when wasn't an appropriate time to kiss or be kissed, and Erik would have thought based on all evidence (Charles was going to have a busy morning, he was about to get a lecture by his sister, he had already been pushed into dinner and staying the night and cuddling) that now would not be deemed an appropriate time.

"Sorry," Charles said, apparently taking Erik's surprise as hesitancy. "I must taste awful."

"No," Erik was quick to contend. "I like the way you taste."

"Serial killer line number three," Charles claimed. "Come on. Time to face the day, Mr. Dahmer."

"Nooooooo," Erik groaned, holding him around the waist. "Not yet."

"I've got to. You can laze away if you want, bed head."

Erik was tempted. He still had hours before work, most likely. But it didn't matter, Charles didn't mean it anyway.

"Come on, up, up, up, up," Charles said, shovelling him out of bed.

"Hey, what happened to getting to laze away?"

"Who's going to keep me company over breakfast then?"

Erik was too flattered that Charles wanted his company to argue with that, and so he allowed himself to be forced wearily from bed, stretching his bare legs. His sparse attire was not lost on the brunet.

"I don't know how you can sleep in so little and still be as hot as you were last night. I thought for sure you were running a fever," Charles groused, going into the bathroom.

Erik frowned, hesitating before finally following when he saw that the man was just washing his face. He liked the view, Charles bending over his sink in his low-slung flannels. The man's sweatshirt had ridden up in the back, revealing one muscular hip. Too irresistible--he just had to reach out, hands fitting themselves over each hip bone, feeling Charles' muscles shifting minutely against his palms. It was mouth-watering. Even better was when Charles straightened himself, not pushing Erik away but leaning back into him, his body a sturdy weight against Erik's from shoulder to thigh.

But best of all was when, taking his hand, Charles slid it off his hip, around to his stomach and then  _down_ , eyes heavy-lidded and glinting in the mirror. Erik loved watching them slip closed, the man's breath expanding against him stiltingly, his hips shifting against Erik as he slipped his hand under Charles' waistband, the heat of him more pronounced here.

Somehow, nuzzling into Charles' hair, the man's hips rubbing him to eagerness, his brain managed to come up with the very last thing he wanted to say.

"Are you sure we have time for this?"

_Shit._

_Say yes, say yes._

"Why do you think I forced you out of bed at this ungodly hour?"

"We  _could_ have done this in bed," Erik grinned, overjoyed he hadn't managed to ruin anything, moving down to Charles' throat as he began to stroke him in earnest.

"Then we'd have never left and I  _would_ be late," the man said, pushing off him, turning in the hoop of Erik's arms. Those blazing blue eyes gazed up at him thrillingly. "Still might be if you don't shut up and fuck me already."

Erik did  _not_ need telling twice.

He caught Charles' mouth in his own, roughly, driving his mouth open and plunging his tongue inside all at once. He could  _feel_ Charles' groaning response, the vibration of it through his whole body as the man met him with equal fervor, practically climbing him even as Erik forced him back, up and over the ledge of the counter, Charles' legs latching instinctively around his narrow hips, Erik's erection feeling out the cleft of the man's ass through his flannels. His whole body was shaking minutely with want, with  _need_ of his touch. Charles gripped him, arms around his shoulders, shifting, grabbing his face and pulling him even more forcefully close. Charles was smaller than him, but damned strong. 

Adorable as the sweatshirt had been last night, it was now only so much cotton obstacle, and Erik pulled away just long enough to wrestle it roughly off of Charles' body, taking in flashes of brunet tousled hair, kissed-red lips, darkly gleaming eyes. Before the sweatshirt had even hit the ground the man was back on him, his skin smooth and hot, sweat forming against his spine. In his mindless grab, Erik scratched him by accident, too single-minded on  _taking,_ and groaned at the dual onslaughts of Charles' electrified arch into him and his breathless, gasping moan.

"Stop that," he growled, grabbing the man's hip so he would quit rubbing against Erik's already fever-pitched erection.

Charles only grabbed his hair roughly, hissing into his ear, " _I want you to fuck me_ ," before biting him.

"I'm not going to be fucking anything if you keep that up," Erik growled back, getting a hand around Charles' sweat-slick collar and shoving him backwards. The man's head rattled the mirror on impact, but not hard, and Charles didn't even seem to notice, grinning at him devilishly.

With a sweep Erik had his shirt off, and was diving back in, but this time Charles' was the staying hand, impacting him hard--thumb sliding into the tender part of his throat. Erik was peevishly sure it was revenge until he saw the man's face.

Charles' eyes were tea-saucer wide, his face gone from sex-flushed to ghost-white in a moment, and Erik quickly saw why.

Following Charles' gaze, he looked down, saw that his chest was one big, mottled, purple-black bruise.

"Jesus, Erik!" the man shrilled, free hand catching Erik's shoulder and shoving him back a step out of his frozen pose, giving Charles room to jump off the counter and stare in earnest. "What the fuck did you do?!"

"Me?!" Erik yelped back. "Nothing! I didn't do this!"

"I mean _,"_ Charles clarified, leaning in closer, brushing his fingertips over a dark blot. His hand was shaking. "What happened? Does it hurt?"

"I don't feel anything," Erik gasped, shaking his head. "I don't know. I don't feel anything."

"This doesn't hurt?" Charles questioned, pressing one of the darker spots near his heart gingerly.

Erik winced slightly. "It feels a little uncomfortable. It doesn't hurt."

"Uncomfortable how?" the man interrogated at once, voice sharp, clinical. He was back on the job, Erik realized, and twisted away, escaping to the bedroom and pulling another shirt on. "Erik!"

"I don't know, just uncomfortable! What does it matter? So I'm a little bruised!"

" _A little bruised!_ " Charles hissed, grabbing both wrists so Erik couldn't button his shirt. "Would you  _look_ at yourself?"

Erik didn't, although his dressing mirror was right there and he certainly could have. He didn't want to see it. He didn't want to see it ever again. He felt hot, flushed, too hot to breathe.

"Erik this...this is  _serious!_ You need to see a doctor. _"_

" _No,"_ Erik snarled, ripping his wrists free with the strength of sudden panic. Charles only repositioned, grabbing him by the arm this time so he couldn't walk away. He'd gotten lucky before with the element of surprise, this time Charles' grip was too strong to break.

"Damn it, Erik, I'm not playing around! This is not normal--you've got to have someone take a look at this!"

"You have no idea what you're asking!" he shouted, or tried to shout. He was too winded for it to come out very impressively. He ended up sounding exactly as scared as he felt. "I've never--not since my mother--since my leg--I  _can't--_ it's--"

Charles let loose of his arm, wrapping him in a close embrace instead, rubbing his back and murmuring.

"It's okay, it's okay, breathe, breathe, Erik, you've got to breathe..."

He tried to, tried to follow the demonstrative sweeps of Charles's hands on his back as the man pushed and pulled air into him. Seeing how he was supposed to be breathing made him realize how he  _was_ breathing: short, sharp gasps, hyperventilating, his legs were shaking, his vision wavering at the edges. He realized he was very likely going to faint.

"I need to sit down," he gasped.

Charles pushed him back to the bed, would probably have carried him if he'd been just a little bit bigger.

Lying down, with Charles sitting at his waist, rubbing his shoulder, exuding a steady wave of concern and care, made him feel better.

"I'll go with you, if you want," Charles insisted. "Whatever you want, but  _please, please go._ This..." the man's eyes swept his chest, framed by his unbuttoned shirt, in a quick, anxious glance. "I need to know that you're okay, Erik."

"Hey," he insisted, taking Charles' hand tightly in his. "I'm okay."

Charles shook his head, a quick, violent snap. " _I need to_ _ **know**_ _."_

Erik pushed up on one arm, getting the other around Charles' neck and tugging him in close, the other man's breath hot on his shoulder, the feel of his stubble and smooth lips.

"We'll keep an eye on it. If it gets worse-"

"It already  _is_ worse," Charles said, and his voice sounded choked, miserable. When he pulled back to gaze desperately into Erik's eyes, though, he wasn't crying. "It's already worse than it was yesterday. The day before. At the hotel, after...it didn't look this bad, I didn't think anything of it.  _I didn't think_ -"

Erik already felt bad enough to agree, to agree to anything if it meant Charles would feel better. Fucking shit. Erik was obviously not going to win this one. He supposed he should just get used to it when it came to Charles.

"Oh hell," he sighed. "I'll start looking, okay?"

Charles gave him a discerning, slightly confused glance, and he went on. "It's not like I have a family practitioner or anything. I'll see if anyone's available to see me soon. Fuck, they're going to have a fucking field day. Erik Lensherr sees a doctor. I'm going to have to write my own front page article."

Charles was too joyous for his snark, though, beaming up at him, a vision of happiness now.

"You mean it?! You'll go?"

"Do I have a choice? You won't leave me alone till I do," he groaned. He'd barely finished his grousing when Charles tackled him back to the bed, kissing him happily, wriggling against him like an adorably ill-behaved puppy.

"Oh, Erik! You'll see--you'll feel so much better. Nothing beats piece of mind."

"I generally prefer piece of tail," Erik responded, palming Charles' ass demonstratively. The man's eyes went seductively heavy lidded in a moment and he grinned back at him.

"Well," he said in a pleasantly husky voice, licking his lips in that wantonly provocative way he had. "If you can make allowances I guess I can make some too..." Erik did not attempt to fight it as the man's hand slid low, stroking him through his boxer-briefs.

"Finally, we can put your mouth to some good use."


	49. Chapter 49

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello, darlings! Sorry I'm such a sad updater. Please take this two-parter in reparation. Additionally, Carly pointed out in the comments that this song sums up Erik's feelings for Charles super well (and it's just a great song anyway), so check it out! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qf1JvdomH6s Thanks, Carly!

“Ugh, it smells like burnt plastic down here,” Charles commented, covering his nose as they finally made it down the stairs, _almost_ fully clothed. Charles went straight to his laptop, setting it up on the dining room table. Erik guessed that put him in charge of breakfast.

“Something must have fallen in the dishwasher last night,” Erik said, but it was too soon after a bone-melting orgasm for him to care very much. He gave the contents of the dishwasher a cursory glance, shutting it again without further thought. He’d much rather tease Charles.

“You still have room for breakfast?” he asked, hanging himself off the man’s shoulder like a jacket and snaking his arm around to pat his stomach meaningfully. Charles did not seem to notice.

“She did it!” Charles cheered, clicking open an email with more excitement than Erik thought it merited. “Raven finished the book plate!”

“Hurrah,” Erik intoned. He went to get breakfast started. Easy enough since he’d succumbed to optimism and grocery shopped with an extended stay in mind, stocking up on pastries and Toaster Streudels. He simply had to shake some butterhorns onto a plate, sit back, and wait for the pure sugar temptation to wind its way past Charles’ work haze. Good, because that was about all he had energy for. God but that man was good with his mouth. He may never care about anything ever again.

“Huh, there was no K at all; I was way off.  _Sebastian Shaw.”_

Erik tensed back up in an instant, spilling butterhorns all over the kitchen floor.

“ _What_?!” he hissed.

“Ugh, it’s not a very cheery bookplate, I must say.” Charles hadn’t even noticed the egregious waste of sugar, much less his question; he was still too distracted. Erik had to verify on his own, stalking over on legs that felt far away and grabbing the computer. “Hey!” Charles yelped, but Erik hardly heard him.

Raven had cleaned the image up nicely, Erik could clearly make it out now: a man walking, naked, bleeding, hunched over in misery. Above him two long-clawed birds swept, ripping and tearing at him. There was a scroll above that said something in Latin, and a mirroring scroll below where someone had signed, in angular, flowing script:  _Sebastian Shaw._

“Do you know him?” Charles questioned, noticing his reaction now that it was being shoved in his face.

“I’ve seen him.” It came out breathless, reedy, but Charles heard him anyway.

“You have? Where? Who is he? Does he live around here?”

“No, not like that,” Erik growled, shaking his head violently. “I’ve  _seen_ him.” Charles just stared at him, eyes that wide electric blue--god, the man was really going to make him say it. “ _At the_   _house_.”

After a moment, Charles asked in a low voice, “In the stairwell?” Erik nodded, head swimming, feeling full of water, sloshing. In the stairwell, in the reflection of his cellphone, in his dreams. In the painting at the police station. “God.” Quiet, breathless, Charles continued. “Erik, we’ve got to figure out who this is.”

“No.”

“Erik, don’t be difficult; we’ve got to!”

“No, I mean, I already know who he is.”

Charles, if anything, was  _more_ upset by this.

“Erik! How could you know this and not tell me?! We could have been investigating this lead for days already! Do you have any idea how much time we’ve wasted?!”

“I didn’t recognize him at the time--I only just realized it yesterday!” Erik defended himself angrily.

“ _Yesterday_!” Charles exclaimed in return, voice going up an octave in pure unadulterated horror. He was actually  _shaking._ When he looked up at Erik it was with murderously flashing eyes. “Erik, is there  _anything_ else you’re not telling me?”

_The phone. The dreams. The autopsy._

“No.”

Sighing, apparently believing him, Charles dropped his head into his hands and tried to calm down. It took a while. Meanwhile, Erik could hardly believe his luck. As much as Charles distrusted him about their relationship, about dating him, about  _liking_ him, and he let this blatant lie go unchallenged. Charles chose to doubt strange things.

“Okay,” the man breathed when he’d gotten a grip. “Tell me everything you know about this man.”

Instead, Erik got himself a glass of water in order to stall for time, trying to settle his fragmented thoughts. When he returned to his seat he thought he mostly had himself under control, and his voice came out level. Pretty much. He still felt feverish though, like he’d swallowed a bottle of hot sauce and it had gotten lodged in his chest.

“Shaw was governor here, in the 1870s, the 80s. Elected to three terms. Which is un-fucking-heard of. Not allowed these days, of course. That should tell you how popular he was. No,” Erik sighed, pushing his hair back. His hand was shaking but not a lot, and he didn’t think Charles noticed. “Popular doesn’t really do it credit. Obsessed over, maybe. A real cult of personality if ever there was one.

“You’ve seen him, too,” Erik realized suddenly.

“I’ve what?”

“There are pictures of him everywhere--paintings--at the hospital, all the government buildings; statues of him all over the place, streets named after him left and right.”

Charles snapped his fingers. “Senator Shaw Lane!”

The motel was on that road, along with half the town, so Erik wasn’t surprised he knew it.

“That’s right. Along with Shaw Hill, Martyr Square, and Senator Shaw Boulevard, both East and West.”

“But you said Governor Shaw. Did he become Senator?”

Erik winced. “That’s where things get dramatic.”

“Wait!” Charles shouted at full volume, making Erik wince. The man sprinted away, knocking over his chair, nearly falling through the glass coffee table as he lunged all over the living room to find his recorder. When he made it back he was panting but raring to go. Erik grudgingly continued.

“When Governor Shaw was done being the most popular governor in history, he decided to try his hand at being the most popular senator in history, and then probably after that he had his eyes on the presidency. But it never got that far. On the brink of his senatorial campaign, at the big start-off rally here in Avalon, his home base, he was assassinated.”

“What?!” Charles gasped, but then covered his mouth, glancing at the the recorder apologetically.

“Shot. Right through the head.”

“Did they find who did it?”

“No problem with that -- the kid gave himself up immediately. Luckily the police dragged him into custody before the mob had time to realize what the hell was going on. Not that it did him much good. They caught up with him eventually, broke into the jail after dark and burnt him alive in his cell.”

“A  _kid?!_ ”

“Well, teenager.”

“But  _why?_ I mean...why did he do it? Did he say?”

Erik shrugged. “No. No one knows.”

“You’re joking me,” Charles said with a roll of his eyes. “This town knows why someones grandmother switched from Tide to Gain. You’re telling me no one knows why the great Saint Shaw was assassinated?”

“The Illustrious Martyr Sebastian Shaw,” Erik corrected and Charles eyed him disbelievingly. “I’m serious! There’s a community center play about it, every year. I’ll bring you, we can sit with the rest of the elementary school.”

“Elementary school? They aren't a bit too young to learn about assassinations and bloody retribution?” Charles questioned, shutting off the recorder.

“As far as our town is concerned, there should be a mobile about it so kids can start learning about it in the crib. They bring the whole school once a year. Big field trip to indoctrinate the young in the amazing ways of Sebastian Shaw.”

Charles looked at him, seeing him suddenly.

“ _You_ don’t seem a fan of our Illustrious Martyr. Did the indoctrination not take hold?” 

“Yet again, I am the sore thumb in this town, ever sticking out. Dressing nice, speaking English, abstaining from sporting events.”

“Fucking men.”

“That’s not so strange -- half the population does that.”

“So why? Why aren’t you hopping on the Shaw bandwagon?”

Erik tried to think about it,  _actually_  think about it. There wasn’t a real answer. He’d never felt the urge. He didn’t even really remember the play, in fact he thought his mom kept him home those days; they went and did fun stuff--what was the point of going to school if you were just going to go to a play instead? Why not stay home and have fun with your mom? Kids at school played Shaw at recess; it was a big to-do who got to pretend to be him. You got to be boss, or president, you got to be the doctor, everyone else was just your adoring audience, your patients, your constituents. Erik preferred his books to all that nonsense. If he was going to pretend he’d rather have it be interesting. He didn’t want to be Shaw, he didn’t want to be anything fucking approximating him. He wanted to burn--

“Hey, stop that!” Charles cried, yanking his wrist. Erik hadn’t realized but he was rubbing his chest, poking it. “That’s why you’re getting all those bruises!”

Charles kept his hand between his own, rubbing it carefully. Erik clamped down on his instinctive affectionate smile so that Charles didn’t realize what he was doing and turn skittish.

“So that’s the whole infamous Shaw story, Christ reincarnate. I don’t know how this,” he nodded to the book plate. “Got overlooked, but when people hear about it, it’s going to cause a craze like you’ve never seen. I’ll be surprised if people don’t ask to touch his signature to be cured of diabetes, I really will be.”

“What was Shaw doing with a medical textbook of this sort anyway? It seems quite technical...I mean, it may not even be legitimate. Like you said--it’s quite strange it would have gone overlooked all these decades. And what the hell is it doing at the Ash Creek House?”

“Sorry, I should have said: Shaw was a doctor before he was governor-- _while_ he was governor, actually, if I’m remembering correctly. No clue as to the second bit, though. Someone must have brought it there at some point. Who knows?”

“Someone who somehow still managed to overlook what it was.”

“Well, yes.”

“Hmm,” Charles said noncommittally, letting go of Erik’s hand. He sat staring at the image and rubbing his lips instead. Erik’s palms were tingling, but he actually felt better, as if he were floating away from his anxiety. History was facts, dates,  _distant_ , in the  _past_. He was relaxed by how far away it felt. It couldn’t hurt him.

“Death is in my grasp.”

Erik jerked up, staring at Charles with surprise, chilled at hearing those words from his mouth, from the same mouth that had been on him so keenly, so  _sweetly_ , not thirty minutes before.

“The Latin,” Charles explained, motioning to the image before fiddling with his stubble. “Not quite the motto I would have envisioned for an esteemed martyr.”

“You know Latin?”

Charles grinned, relaxing slightly from his pent-up concentration pose.

“Dead languages live on in British boarding schools, rest assured.”

“I didn’t realize you went to boarding school.”

“Mother had to put me somewhere,” the man joked back, but then stopped with a wince. “I’d better get going.”

“What about breakfast?”

Charles eyed the pastries still scattered on the floor and looked a bit tempted.

“Thirty minute rule?”

“It won’t be the dirtiest thing you’ve ever put in your mouth I’m sure.”

“You better watch what you say or you won’t be putting anything in my mouth again.”

“Got it,” Erik agreed with a wink. He made a big show of locking his lips shut before getting up, giving Charles a quick kiss before going to resupply him with sugar.

* * *

 It was slightly windy out, but very warm. Erik didn’t bother to put on a jacket as he walked Charles to his car, stepping barefoot and careful over the bumpy concrete of his driveway.

“This isn’t actually necessary,” Charles pointed out. “I mean I can manage to get thirty yards on my own.”

“Yes, but why should you have to?” Erik teased, wrapping an arm around Charles’ strong shoulders. He couldn’t keep it up long; Charles was too laden with bags and insistent against Erik’s help carrying them to walk gracefully together.

“I’ll be out most of the day. Probably work through lunch. Lots to do,” Charles chirped away, refitting his satchel where it kept slipping. Erik released him enough to help fit it back over his shoulder. “I don’t seem to get very good reception out there, so call me at the house phone as soon as you’re through with the doctor. Are you sure you don’t want me to go with you?”

“I never said I didn’t want you to go with me.”

“Oh, well, I can’t go with you anyway. Busy day, like I said.”

“You’re a real dork, you know that?” Erik growled, turning Charles around and pinning him to the driver’s door.

“Are you going to punish me?” Charles grinned back, rolling his hips against Erik’s and making him groan.

“Tonight I will. Come stay again?”

Charles winced. “I can’t.”

“Of course you can! Don’t be ridiculous!”

“I’m quite sure I’ll be in enough trouble after _this_ stint. Let’s leave it at that.”

“Don’t be like that,” Erik cajoled, pressing close, conjoining them from ribs to ankles. He nuzzled into Charles’ jaw and the man nuzzled back, his breath warm on Erik’s ear, tickling him. “Come stay the night. I can pay you back for this morning, hmm?”

“Let’s,” Charles hummed softly. “Let’s see how it goes, okay?”

“Oh come on now,” he groaned, pulling back just enough to pout into Charles’ face. “I’m already debasing my pride begging you to do date me, don’t make me beg for a night with you on top of that.”

“I don’t know,” Charles teased. “I sort of like to hear you beg. If you promise to do it tonight then I  _might_ come.”

“Oh you’ll definitely come,” Erik purred, and kissed him to seal the deal.

Rushed as Charles claimed to be, the man kissed him back avidly, hands coming up and stroking his jaw, his throat, pulling him closer by his collar. Charles’ mouth was smooth and sweet-tasting, plying, demanding, to the point that Erik felt himself dragged to the very cusp of control, till in another moment he would have to throw the man into the back seat and ravish him right there on the street.

Charles seemed to feel similarly, the way he pulled back, the gleaming look in his bright eyes that seemed to encourage a back-seat rendezvous. But then the man glanced to the side, caught on something; his cheeks burned bright red and he came down off his amorous high in an instant, shrinking as far away from Erik as his embrace allowed.

“There’s a cop watching us.”


	50. Chapter 50

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And here's part 2! Thanks for being so patient!

Erik whipped around, and sure enough there was a police car parked not far down the street. It was too far to recognize the driver but Erik thought he could guess anyway and shivered, stepped back.

“Do you know him?” Charles questioned, sounding slightly anxious.

“I’m not sure,” Erik muttered, the lie tasting bitter in his mouth.

“Well,” Charles said, clearing his throat and shifting away from him. “I should be going anyway.”

“Hey, I’ll see you tonight,” Erik reminded, catching the man’s hand.

Charles smiled back at him shyly.

“Tonight,” he agreed after a minute, and kissed Erik’s wrist lightly before fleeing. Even after the man drove off with an embarrassed sort of wave, Erik could still feel it there, the imprint of his mouth, warm and tingling, and his stomach roiled with something more charming than anxiety.

Though anxiety did take an ugly foothold when he went to walk back into the house and Mark’s voice stopped him.

“Oh I sure as hell know you ain’t goan turn tail like that an’ preten’ you ain’t even seen me!” the man shouted at him as he chased Erik down.

He grimaced, realizing he was not going to be able to escape his friend that easily. It was a small town, too small to escape awkward situations for long.

“Oh hi, Mark,” he coughed. “Didn’t see you there.”

“The hell you dinnit. Where is it?”

“Where’s what?”

“Damn it, Erik! You know what I’m talkin’ about! Where’s the case file?”

“Oh, that,” Erik laughed weakly, rubbing the back of his head.

Groaning, Mark squatted down and squeezed his head between his palms, an act of frustration Erik had mainly witnessed during atrocious calls by referees during intense sports games.

When he stood up again it was with an effusion of anger, and he grabbed Erik by the collar, shoving him backwards until he hit the side of the house. Erik tried very hard not to find this unspeakably erotic.

“Do you have any idea how much trouble I could get into over this?” Mark hissed, fist pinning Erik by his chest. Although it didn’t hurt, Erik felt he should push the man’s hand off him, even just to prevent further bruising, but he didn’t. Mark would ask him why and he’d have to show him, and that was not a can of worms he wanted opened.

“Mark , I’m sorry. I’m sorry, okay? I just wanted to take a look at it. I’ll give it back.”

“It’s the most impornant file we’ve ever had  _ever_ an’ you lift it from my desk like a middle school shoplifter, are you kiddin’ me?”

“I said I was sorry!” Erik wailed.

"You tell me rat now: did that boy put you up ter it?"

"Boy?"

"Mr. Bigtime Hollywood! I saw you two, ya know, kissin in the street like teenagers. Did he make you do this? Like...pay to play?!"

"Mark, no! Charles isn't like that! I...I did it on my own." Although, now that he thought about it, would he have taken the file if he hadn't known exactly how thrilled Charles would be to have it?

“This is ezackly the shit Chief Boomer was talkin’ about!”

“Chief Boomer?” Erik asked, wondering how the burly man had gotten mixed up in all of this. His curiosity ignited within him, and he pushed Mark off, taking the offensive now. “What did he say?”

Mark, losing his aggressive edge, rubbed his beautiful face with frustration.

“Damn it,  _nothing_. He dinnit say nothing.”

“You are the worst liar. How are you a police officer? Just tell me. You’re going to tell me anyway. Just tell me now. Get it over with. Come on. Tell me.”

Glaring at him with those two gorgeous eyes, Mark grit his teeth and answered him.

“He tole me not ta help you. So somehow or ‘nother I  _really_ think he would have somethin’ ta say bout you comin up with our case file!”

Erik was shocked, almost too shocked to respond, but not quite. “What the hell is that supposed to mean? Why aren’t you allowed to help me? Help me with what?”

“Look, Erik,” Mark growled, poking him in the chest meaningfully. Erik could only imagine what he was going to look like after all this chest-poking. He might have to leave his shirt on when he went after Charles tonight. “Affer my sister’s article the whole town thinks you an Zavier are a hot item, and from what I can see on the damned  _street in broad daylight_ ya’ll ain’t doin’ much ta disprove it. The last thing we need is this kid’s autopsy showin up on the next season of his show! It is still an ongoin’ investigation I’ll have ya know.”

“Mark,” he pointed out. “That doesn’t make any sense. I mean, the chief had no clue you took that file in the first plase, did he?”

“I sure as hell hope not!”

“Then how could he mean for you to not give me the Lovegood file if he didn’t know you had the Lovegood file?”

Mark blinked up at him, that adorable idiot.

“Well, he--he knows we’re friends,” the man stammered. “So he prolly knew if Zavier did ask you fer it then you’d ask me and I’d help ya cuz we’re friends.”

“Mark, darling,” Erik cooed, gripping his shoulders. “That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard. That makes no sense. If he thought you’d go around handing case files out to every friend of yours who asked he never would have hired you.”

Mark frowned, scuffing his feet on the garage floor.

“Now who’s bein’ fuckin’ dumb? You know the only reason they hired me is cuz my momma's sisser is head of HR and they counnit come up with a reason to keep me out. None a them at the office ain’t ever trusted me, not really. Specially Boomer. He’s always lookin’ at me sidewise. Juss cuz my daddy was a lawyer and my grandpa was a activist. I mean before all that my family bled blue for generations! Juss cuz  _one_ ancessor has a mennal breakdown and quits the force, is that so bad? Does that mean I gotta live like a fuckin pariah my whole life?”

“Come on, Mark. This town never forgets anything.”

Marked glared up at him. “Me neither. Now gimme back that file and see if I ever mess around with you like that agin.”

Shame burning him deep, Erik led his friend upstairs.

“Oh gawd,” Mark bawled as soon as they walked in. “It smells like burnt plastic. What the hell were ya’ll up to?”

Erik hadn’t really thought much about it that morning. Aside from the mind-numbing orgasm he’d just had, he hadn’t even really noticed the smell as being all that bad. Now, coming fresh from outside, it did seem especially acrid. Too acrid for just for simple tupperware.

Gagging, he and Mark threw open the windows before Erik searched for the source of the stench, something nearby. It didn’t take him long.

Lifting up his seat cushion on the chair near the couch he saw the fabric was charred and melted down to the springs, the metal glinting out from the blackness like bones. His cellphone sat at the center of the destruction, unharmed.

“The battery musta overheated,” Mark said, breaking their long silence. “I seen that happen on the news afore. The vent gets covered and it overheats.”

“Right,” Erik nodded, numb. He didn’t point out that the phone itself wasn’t burnt, wasn’t scorched or damaged in any way. He didn’t point out that this was only one link in a heavy chain of strange things happening to him lately.

“Ughm,” he cleared his voice. “I’ve got to get going. I’ve got to get to work.”

“Oh, yeah,” Mark coughed, taking the case file from the couch, tapping the cover anxiously.

“Look, Erik,” he sighed heavily at last. “I’m sorry bout earlier. You know I ain’t mad atcha. Hell, I nabbed the case in the first place, you ain’t done nothin worse but what I did.”

“Okay,” Erik said, counting down the seconds till he left. His skin felt too cool over his overheated flesh. “Thanks.”

Mark patted him hard on the back and then did it one more time for good measure, obviously not trusting their reconciliation until Erik did it back, which he managed to do, his arm feeling far off and mechanical, like a toy he had to maneuver by remote control.

"Juss...juss be careful with this guy, okay? Hollywood is a lot diffrent than Avalon. They ain't like normal people." 

Erik nodded and watched out the window until Mark drove off, at which time he took his cell phone and slammed it against the wall, battery exploding out of it and hitting the TV. He slammed it again, shattering the screen, just to be extra sure. Then he packed his satchel: his notebook, his recorder, spare batteries, the travel lock-picking kit his father had given him as a child. This, especially, seemed crucial now, it seemed important to plan for all eventualities, prepare for any emergency. He dug his portable first aid kid out of his bathroom and shoved that in, too, then sat staring at it, thinking. What else? What else might he need?

His brain didn’t come up with anything, couldn’t think of anything right now.

He had to go. It was time to go.

* * *

 

“Yoouuuuu’re late,” Rebecca drawled at him as he poured himself through the door. It was still early, but he felt as if he’d lived this day for weeks. He was aware he looked tired, grimy, not his best. It had been a fast and furious drive out to the city dump to get rid of that chair, and he’d had to go to the strip mall with the cell store and then argue with this overweight guy he’d gone to high school with because apparently he was the only person on earth who wanted a new phone  _and_ a new number.

“Is Emma going to behead me the moment I get through the door?” he questioned, leaning against the wall for support. “Should I even bother?”

“Sheeeee isn’t in,” said Rebecca, checking her nails.

“What?I” Erik scoffed, standing. “Where is she?”

“Probably off murrrdering that MacTaggert woman.” Rebecca shrugged for good measure. She didn’t know and she didn’t care, as usual. Erik didn’t know why he bothered. Going into the office he collapsed in his chair and tried to decide if he could get away with napping.

“Did you hear?” Janos questioned, coming up behind him, making him jump out of his slump. “Emma is off to fight MacTaggert.”

“Great,” Erik grunted.

“She’s actually writing a rebuttal to that piece of trash from yesterday. Well, as long as it’s not me. I don’t think I could write anything scathing enough to please Emma. There aren’t enough synonyms for ‘vile wench’ in the English language for her tastes.”

“Ha, ha,” Erik intoned.

“Oh, what’s wrong?” Janos simpered, rubbing his shoulders. “That boy of yours keeping you up late?”

“Get off of me,” said Erik, shoving the other man away roughly.

“Ohhhh, touchy,” Janos laughed, backing away with his hands up. He didn’t seem to take him very seriously though, winking as he went to gossip with the other coworkers milling about amazed by this strange turn of events. Even if Janos was correct, it was strange. Emma never missed work. When she did, it was always a ruse to catch them unawares when she lunged in in the middle of the day seeing who had used this opportunity to slack off or sneak in some extra coffee breaks.

Erik plugged his new phone in and got to work while it charged. Emma had emailed him his assignment, a  _very_ brief “Out of the office today. Write everything you can find about the Lovegoods.”

Great, that was just what he needed. Go figure, immediately after stealing the Lovegood file and being warned against printing anything juicy from an unresolved police case he gets this fucking assignment. What were the chances he could beg off with a sick day? No, no chance: there would be no way to convince Emma it wasn’t sex-induced.

Light bulb going off painfully in his skull, he grabbed for his work phone. But of course he didn’t know the number, had never had to call it before, so then had to look up the number for Dr. Agis’ office.

Erik didn’t know of many doctors, he’d never had need of one before, outside of the hospital. But he still knew of Dr. Agis. He was the oldest man in Avalon, even though no one technically knew how old he was. Anyone could have looked it up, it would have been an easy feat, but no one had. There were too many bets on it all over town; it would spoil the game. Instead, they were all waiting for the official obituary to call in all bets at that time. Erik himself had bet $40 on 1923 against Mark, who insisted on the paltry date of 1945 and was sure to lose. Dr. Agis was doctor to most of Avalon, and now to him.

“Hello!” the chipper voice twirped across the line. “Sandra at Dr. Agis’ office, and how may I be of assistance to you today?” She spoke with the news-anchor tones of someone from Avalon pretending very hard they weren’t, every word the product of an actresses’ hard concentration.

“Hi, I need to make an appointment,” he coughed.

“Okee-dokee!” she cheered back. “Your name?”

“Erik Lensherr.”

“Oh gosh,” she laughed uproariously. “I thought you said Lensherr! Hahahaha!”

“I did,” he growled.

There was silence on the other line, a long silence, and then the voice came back, devoid of ruse, all excessive Avalon twang.

“Hayng an, I’mma hafta putchyou on hole.”

The music was upbeat and repetitive, not an actual song, just pleasing noises. Erik did not doodle while he waited, or tap his pen to the tempo, but simply sat there, waiting for a voice to pick up. When it did it wasn’t Sandra.

“Hallo?” an ancient, decrepit-sounding voice hawked across the line. “This Lensherr?”

“Um, yes... Erik Lensherr.”

“This is Ulysses A. Agis. Heard you were wantin’ ta come n see me and figured it had to be some kinda prank--you know like these young kids do. Sandra said to me ‘It’s the Lensherr boy on the phone fer an appoin’ment’ an I say ta her, ‘Ain’t no way, Sandra, juss ain’t no way, gimme that phone’.” 

There was a silence that dragged on awkwardly until Erik said, “...So here we are.”

“Hahahahah!” the laughed turned into hacking coughs and Erik cringed. “Juss so! Juss so! Well now I’ll give you back to Sandra and we’ll get you all set up to come in. Gotta admit, I’m curious as heck to finally meet one a you elusive fellers. Curious, curious....”

“Um, okay, so,” but he was cut off, a brief musical interlude and then Sandra, back to her old chipper self.

“Okay, Mr. um... well, ha! Mr. Lensherr! Let’s get you set up for an appointment! Now, what seems to be the problem?”

“Um, bruising.”

“Bruising?”

“Bruising.”

“Oh, okay. Well, how does next Friday sound?”

“No, no good. It has to be today.”

“Oh, I’m afraid we’re all booked up today. What about Tuesday?”

“No,  _today._ You have to understand. It’s today or nothing. Look, Dr. Agis wants to see me, doesn’t he? A real, authentic Lensherr. Well it’s now or never.”

Sandra was silent a moment, and then said, rather breathlessly, “Well okee dokee then.”

He had an appointment at one and tried to not let that panic him out of his mind but it didn’t work completely.


	51. Chapter 51

When Erik was young and feeling especially under the weather, his mom had taught him a trick for getting through his nausea. She’d told him to count to ten, and focus on not getting sick for the next ten seconds. Then, when he’d gotten through ten seconds, he should start again and focus on the next ten. This tended to work for him, possibly because he could orchestrate his breathing with the technique as well. Breathe in five seconds, breathe out five seconds. It worked wonders.

But not now.

 _Breathe in one, two, thr_ —it broke apart, breath huffing out anxiously before it was time. Frustrated, he grabbed the armrests of this 1970s block-style wooden chair, immediately regretting it. How many germ-ridden hands had touched that very surface?

As if on cue this huge woman at the end of the row from him started hacking up a lung, not taking her eyes off him the whole time. He glanced to the receptionist and she was staring at him as well, and he was overcome with the urge to escape, to run away. He couldn’t, and not just because he’d promised Charles he’d see the doctor (although that was a pretty huge sticking point).

He forced himself to stay in his seat, waiting for the nurse to come out and call his name and bring him to his doom. He couldn’t do this, mentally he couldn’t do this. If he had to be there at least his mind should be able to escape. It turned inexorably to Charles. What was he doing, what was he thinking at this exact moment? What would he think of what Raven had told him?

What Raven had told him…It was his first opportunity to go over this, and he tried to do it now in as much detail as possible, to push away the grain of germ-ridden wood under his hands and pull closer the feel of his keyboard when Raven had come into the office that morning. In his mind he turned his head to follow Janos’ gaze and Raven was standing there at the lobby door. He tried to remember the exact glint of her hair under the fluorescents, worn loose and curlier than usual. She was wearing black jeans and a yellow T-shirt with a drawing of a cactus on it, for some reason.

“Hey,” she’d said, and he tried to feel her exact timbre over the sound of the woman coughing nearby, the apologetic coyness of it. “Want to get lunch? My treat?”

“Where’s Charles?” he’d asked, and mouthed the words silently now.

“Oh, you know Charles,” she sighed, smiling. The camaraderie of it, the fact that he _did_ know Charles and that she was acknowledging that he did know made the last of the decision for him. The brunt of it was a distraction from waiting for his appointment, and having her waste money on him, but that was the last little bit required.

He grabbed his satchel and they walked to the pizza place on the corner.

Erik had felt too sickly to eat, but he ordered two of the ‘gourmet’ (a.k.a. expensive) slices and their largest soda and proceeded not to touch it as Raven picked at her salad, building up the nerve to say whatever she’d come all the way out here and slipped both her brother and Azazel to say.

“Interview day today,” she said finally. Charles hadn’t told him anything about that, and he sat in bitter silence over it, forcing Raven to continue on her own. “Lots of…lots of commotion…”

“Is that how you managed to sneak over here?”

“I didn’t sneak,” she muttered.

A nurse came out then, and Erik jumped at the sound of the door opening, but she called out for some mom with a sticky-looking toddler and he settled back into his memory with jittery resolve.

“Really I...I wanted to apologize about last night,” Raven had said, slowly smearing dressing across every available piece of sad-looking lettuce in her bowl.

“Why? You didn’t scream at _me_ and call _me_ a spineless whore.”

She blushed bright red, all the way to her hairline, and looked away.

“I know...I know that didn’t look very good...”

“Among other things.”

“I...part of the reason I wanted to...I wanted to explain...”

He hadn’t interrupted, didn’t know how she possibly thought she could explain away what he had witnessed her do.

“Azazel said that he’d...sort of told you...I mean about the general sort of stuff from when we were younger...Charles and I...”

“About you running away and Charles picking up the pieces? Yeah, he gave me the rundown.”

Her jaw clenched, and she moved from playing with her food to playing with her napkin, slowly ripping it into confetti.

“When we were kids you couldn’t pull us apart,” she murmured with a sad-sounding chuckle. “If you can believe that. I mean he only got to visit over the summers...if that. Sometimes I’d go visit him for different holidays. Christmas, Easter break, stuff like that. We always had so much fun. It was just us, you know? Otherwise we were both so alone. He was in this boarding school, best in England or whatever, but he was _always_ so weird. He wanted to make friends, but it never seemed to work out, somehow. And me...I mean I was living with our mom, and then our step-dad moved in, and his son, and Charles likes to throw that in my face. I had the family--as shitty as it was and as lonely as it was he thinks because I had them and he didn’t that I won the prize or something. I mean, he was goddamn _welcome_ to them, you know?”

Erik wasn’t sure he did know, but stayed silent, willing her to continue. This was likely more than Charles was ever going to tell him about the situation. Even if Raven’s version was almost certainly biased, it was better than nothing.

“It wasn’t really bad until I was a teenager. My stepdad was just such a hard-ass. It was like as soon as I had an opinion of my own, he didn’t even know me--didn’t _want_ to know me. If I wasn’t agreeing with him he didn’t even want to hear me talk. It was just shouting match after shouting match. As for my mom—she was just a total non-entity. Whatever Kurt said was gospel as far as she was concerned, she just wanted to be left out of it; left to her drink. I asked to go move in with Charles--he didn’t _have_ to live at boarding school, we could get an apartment together or something. We were old enough. He was almost eighteen. But my stepdad refused. I was still in high school, there was no way I was changing schools, I couldn’t run away from my problems, I needed to build character, blah blah blah.

“So instead, Charles came to live with us. He took a leave of absence from school, or dropped out...I’m not sure, actually. But I was overjoyed. Finally someone was going to be there for _me_ , be on _my_ side. But Charles...” She shook her head sadly. “He just wanted everyone to get along. Go along with it, don’t make waves. Like last night with that article. What can you do--that’s life--you’ve got to shrug it off--don’t bother trying to actually change things, just survive it. He wanted me and my stepdad to sit down, talk it out, it was all just a big miscommunication. We’d sing kumbayah and cry on each others’ shoulders and magically I’d be an obedient little darling in a poodle skirt and he’d be Pa Beaver, wise and loving. The kid was sweet but naive. We’d start yelling at each other and he’d just sit there muttering platitudes, ‘Let’s not speak to one another like this’ ‘Let’s sit down and talk this over calmly,’ on and on. There was no indignation. No fury. He could listen to my step dad talk to me like that and never once come to my defense. I mean one good punch and he never would have spoken to me like that again, but for Charles that never even came to mind, no matter how awful the guy was.”

“Wait, wait, wait,” Erik coughed. “You’re mad...you abandoned your brother there and ran off with some shitty boyfriend because he wouldn’t _punch_ your stepdad?” It was like expecting Hell to freeze over on your whim; it was actually probably more plausible for Hell to freeze over than for Charles to _punch_ someone because of some beef.

She blinked at him, apparently having forgotten she was telling the story to another human being capable of response.

“You _dragged_ him over there, made him leave school, made him stay with this family who had proven time and again they didn’t even want to be in the same _country_ as him, and then you left him there with _no one_...because he would not punch your step father in the face. I heard you correctly?”

She blushed. “Sometimes physical violence is all a person understands. We can sit here and pretend that everyone can just sit down and talk their feelings out and everything will be so well-discussed and perfect, but you and I _both_ know that is not the world we live in. Sometimes talking it out doesn’t do shit. I get that and he doesn’t, and that does not make me a terrible person.”

“And it doesn’t make him an idiot.”

Raven rolled her eyes and sat back, as if Erik were so besotted that he could not physically understand her.

“Hey,” he growled. “Until you understand that, I don’t see how you expect him to be understanding of you. You think you fucked up when you were sixteen and he’s just holding a grudge, but you’re still doing it, Raven. You’re still refusing to understand him. I’m not saying it’s easy--I barely understand him either, but you can’t just brush it off as he’s a blitheless dork and you’re the hard-nosed street-smart sister who’s going to protect him from his own naivete. You’ve got to learn what you couldn’t when you were sixteen: you’ve got to accept what you can’t change. You can’t change him, Raven. You just have to love him. _All_ of him.”

“I do,” she said, looking him in the eye.

He’d checked his watch then, realized he couldn’t put it off any longer.

“You can decide if that’s true or not. I’ve got an appointment to get to. Thanks for lunch.”

“Thanks for the therapy session.”

She didn’t try to follow him out, just sat there deep in thought, drinking his abandoned soda. He couldn’t help but be a little impressed, despite himself. She hadn’t argued, hadn’t pretended he was wrong, just kept quiet, seemed thoughtful, seemed to really take it under advisement. That was a good sign, at least...

“Erik... _Lensherr_?” a nurse said, sounding extremely unsure. She turned to the reception desk. “Becky, this can’t be right.”

But by then he’d managed to force himself to stand he she realized it _was_ right, and stared him up and down like the world’s first walking root vegetable.

“Come with me,” she muttered, and led him into the back offices to get his height and weight.

Taking off his shoes he nearly tripped and fell into the wall, he was that nervous just being back here, really going through with it. He realized he was shaking.

“Lil nervous?” the nurse (Chrissy, according to a needlessly flamboyant name tag on her scrubs) said, smirking.

“Shut up,” he muttered, fairly sure it was quiet enough that she didn’t hear him.

Stepping on the scale, he was sure he would have lost weight, what with all the recent stress and rampant sex, was surprised to see he’d actually _gained_ five pounds. His heart growing three sizes? He poked his chest, afraid that wasn’t far off.

“So, we’ll just get your blood pressure, pulse and oxygen levels, and then Dr. Agis should be ready to see you. You really ain’t ever been to the doctor before?”

“So?” he growled back.

Chrissy blushed and shrugged, getting some bright blue thing and velcroing it around his upper arm.

“Strange is all,” she grumbled.

Erik studied her face as she slowly viced his bicep with a hand pump, so he could better imagine her death later. He hated her frizzy red hair and her barely there eyebrows and the mole on the side of her neck. He hated her cheap metal earrings and the even cheaper heart-shaped necklace that said MOM. He would imagine strangling her with this necklace, he decided.

“140 over 90,” she said, as the sleeve let him loose with a hiss and she pulled it off him. “That’s a bit high. Have you been under some stress lately?”

“None of your business,” Erik grumbled back. “Am I here to see a doctor or you?”

Chrissy pursed her orangey-pink lips (someone someday should inform her that Smackers was not an appropriate lipstick choice anymore) and grabbed his hand, pinning something like a clothespin to the end of it.

“Breathe normally.”

He struggled to, realizing he was panting slightly. _One, two, three, f—One, two, thr—fuck._ Chrissy pursed her lips even more and looked at the readout with confusion.

“Huh.”

“What?” he gasped.

“Well the oxygen reading is okay, but there’s some interference with the heartbeat.” She took the machine off him and held onto his wrist, staring at the clock as she did so, furrow between her brows becoming more and more pronounced, purse of her lips intensifying until he wondered if she wanted him to kiss her.

“Well, I’ll tell Dr. Agis to take a look.”

Before that, Chrissy wanted to go over every detail of his medical history, any meds he was on now. That went pretty quick since he wasn’t on anything (although he was looking more and more forward to being _put_ on something, preferably a fucking tranquilizer, at this point).

“The doctor will be with you shortly,” Chrissy said, and shut the door. As soon as she did, Erik grabbed the trash bin and retched, but nothing came up, luckily. He paced the floor, pulling at his collar. Somewhere a baby was crying and Erik retched again. He smelt smoke, thick and acrid, and groaned.

When he looked up there were three deep wells set into the stone floor and smoke was pouring out of two of them. He could feel the heat of it, the pinpricks of hot ash falling on his skin and sticking till he was covered in blackness and death.

When the door opened he opened his eyes and it was gone and the world’s oldest man was coming at him, dressed in a white coat and orthopedic shoes and almost certainly an adult diaper.

“Max!” the man exclaimed when he was apparently close enough to see, stopping in his tracks. Erik actually _yelled_ at the sudden ballooning pain in his chest, expansive and shocking.

“Whoah, whoah,” the man said, shuffling closer, moved out of his surprised paralysis by Erik’s yelp.  He collapsed heavily into an ancient rolling chair, making it squeal. “You okay there, boy? Sorry, sorry, dinnit mean ta scare ya. Damn it’s just ya look juss like yer grandaddy. _Juss_ like yer granddaddy. Spittin image…surprised me is all. Course you ain’t Max, Max is dead! Hahaha.” The laughing seemed to bring up a lung and the man spent a minute coughing and then punching it back into place.

Erik spent the time catching his breath, trying valiantly not to throw up. He couldn’t believe he’d told Charles he didn’t need to come. Charles should have come. He wished Charles were with him right now, and not this ancient freak with his tufts of spidery white hair growing from everywhere _except_ his withered and age-spotted skull. Every scrap of skin seemed to be melting from his body, dangling a full couple of inches from where they were originally meant to be. The glasses were at least an inch thick, and magnified the man’s rheumy blue eyes and cataracts. His ears were the size of funnel cakes, and equally covered in a fine white powder that Erik realized was dry skin.

He gagged, but Dr. Agis was hard of hearing (even with two hearing aids), and continued on in a wet-sounding grumble now that he’d recovered from his cough, seemingly to himself.

“Yep, sad, sad day, poor Max Eisenhardt. _Eisenhardt_. Course your mama took your daddy’s name. Broke ole Max’s heart. He wanted a son, of course. Oh there’d been girls in the family before, and they just kept the family name, even way back when, which let me tell ya, used ta be _quite_ a strange thing! Anyway, family name went back generations. Tole your mamma keep her own name, but little Edie always had her own mind. Took your daddy’s name, named you Erik. Ole Max had a damn fit at that. All the Eisenhardt boys were either Max or Jakob, all the girls Edie or Ana, all the way up the line—Max, Jakob, Edie, Ana, Max again, Edie again.. Woulda been a simple thing seeing as how your daddy’s name were already Jakob. Common name with the Semites. Jakob Jr., ta-daaaa, done. But not Edie. Uh uh. You were _her_ kid and she was gonna make sure her daddy knew it!”

Dr. Agis paused to spit into his handkerchief and Erik used this momentary silence to say, “My grandfather died before I was born. So I don’t really have an opinion on this. Now if we could—“

But the man didn’t seem to hear him. Erik sulked darkly and considered grabbing him by his spottled egg-head and turning his hearing aids up for him. Or maybe _on_. How was he supposed to get this over with if they never even _got_ to it?

“Max talked about cuttin her off all the time. I mean _all_ the time. About the only thing you could get him talking about was either cuttin Edie off or else that Gone Away House.”

“Wait,” Erik gasped. “What?”

Dr. Agis went on regardless, and Erik couldn’t tell if it was in light of his interest or if the man was just set on some internal train of thought that went along whatever track it happened to find.

“Course he wasn’t a man of much company, Max Eisenhardt. Dinnit get out much. HOO but when he did! Damn was that a man of opinions. Always the same damn opinions too. What a bore. Edie was turnin her back on her family, forgetting where she was from, who she was—he should cut her off. She wasn’t raising that boy right—he should cut her off. That Gone Away House was the mouth of hell—they should burn the damn thing down.”

Chrissy knocked and entered, not waiting for a response, possibly knowing it wasn’t likely to interrupt Dr. Agis’ monologue in any case. She blanched and tightened when she realized what Dr. Agis was saying.

“You shounnit be talking to him bout all this!” she snarled at the old man, whacking him on the arm. Dr. Agis seemed to snap slowly from his reverie, blinking between the two of them.

“We were having a conversation!” Erik balked. How could his grandfather have thought his mother wasn’t raising him right if the man died before he was even born?

“Are you here for a conversation or are you here for a doctor because I’ve got plenty of _real_ patients that would love a spot!” she growled back.

“Thass right,” Dr. Agis muttered anciently. “Thass right, Nurse Fletcher. Okay, where were we?” He blinked blankly at Erik, legitimately waiting for a response.

“I…” he gaped, blushing, unsure how to phrase it. “I’m having trouble sleeping.” Not technically a lie. He could always work his way up to discussing the bruising. Maybe once Nurse fucking Ratched left. But Chrissy sat on a nearby stool and showed no sign of leaving Dr. Agis to his own running mouth again.

“Sleep, huh?” Dr. Agis said. “Used ta be in the old days man just took a good plug of Scotch before bed. Or whisky. To each their own. Frowned upon today, of course. Lots of pills and mumbo jumbo instead.”

“We’ll get you a prescription,” Chrissy said, sounding fed up. “Send it to the grocery story? That work? Okay, now, you mentioned bruising. What sort of bruising?”

Bristling, Erik realized it just wasn’t feasible to wait her out or hope she’d leave again.

Silently, he unbuttoned his shirt, blushing at Chrissy’s wide-eyed stare.

“Huh,” Dr. Agis grunted, rolling his chair closer. “Huh.” He peered at Erik’s chest through his myopic eyes so closely that his glasses knocked into Erik’s chest at one point.

“Any pain?” the man mumbled, prodding his chest carefully.

“No.”

“Trauma?”

“No. Not that would cause that. I mean, just the general…um…” Erik tried to think of a word that was not ‘fooling around’, failed, and coughed instead. “It’s nothing though, right? I mean…Anemia or something?”

Dr. Agis continued to stroke his chest awkwardly, his skin like warm tissue paper.

“Maybe an X-ray…” Chrissy said, almost to herself. Dr. Agis nodded. He didn’t seem to have a problem hearing _her_.

“Yep, sounds about right. X-ray it is. Make sure all’s well down there.”

“And a blood test? In case of anemia?” Chrissy chimed in. Why the fuck did they even have a damned doctor?

“Sure, why not?”

Because it meant sticking him with a needle and taking his blood, that was why not!

Chrissy took him down to the X-ray technician and Dr. Agis patted his barrel-like stomach and muttered something about lunch time and get him when they were through.

“Never thought I’d see you here!” the tech said as Chrissy tapped her foot too aggressively, those teeter-totter Sketchers that were supposed to give you a great ass. They had their fucking work cut out for them with Chrissy’s Hagen-Daas monstrosity.

“Okay, get it over with,” Erik muttered back.

“Don’t suppose you ‘memer me.”

Erik refocused on the man and realized it was one of the kids from the swimming hole with Alex. He looked older in this setting, looked his age, Erik supposed.

“Guess that House got errybody doin all sorts a strange things, huh? Your boyfriend sent Alex sniffin around, seein bout some sort a innerview up there. You could not _pay_ me to step foot in that fu—“

“Are you quite done?” Chrissy growled, and the boy, man, blushed up to his hairline and jumped back behind the machine, in his little booth to fiddle about (or just escape her), calling for Erik to take off his shirt.

“Okay, all done now…ma’am.”

Chrissy led him back into the lobby via a door opposite the one he’d entered by and pointed down yet another hall on the other side of the reception desk.

“Go on down to the laboratory waiting room. They’ll call your name when they’re ready for you.”

With that she read another name from her clipboard and lead Coughy McCougherson down the regular entrance hall.

Erik gave it a moment and then went back through the door he’d exited through, sneaking surreptitiously until he found Dr. Agis’ office and slinking inside.

The man was leaned over a huge napkin, or possibly a table cloth, set right up over his keyboard, which belonged to a computer, possibly the world’s first computer, it was so massive and primordial.

“Done already?” Dr. Agis gaped over his leaking sandwich as Erik shut the door quickly and near-silently behind him.

“Dr. Agis, you were talking about my grandfather. Something about my grandfather and the Gone Away House. Can you tell me more about that?”

The man stared at him blankly, the pungent aroma of tuna fish and old man making Erik choke.

“My grandfather? Max Eisenhardt?”

The blank stare continued and Erik growled with aggravation.

“Edie Eisenhardt’s dad!”

Something seemed to click and Dr. Agis grinned good-naturedly.

“Oh, Edie Eisenhardt! Well, Edie Lensherr in the end. Took her husband’s name—broke her daddy’s heart. All he ever talked about, how he should cut her off.”

“That’s right!” Erik cheered. “That’s all he ever talked about, cutting her off _and the Gone Away House_!”

“Course Edie always did have a mind of her own,” Dr. Agis chuckled, and Erik began pulling his hair out. “She came here not more than twelve, just a wee little thing. Town took to them hard, and old Max Eisenhardt didn’t do her any favors. I can’t think of a man who downright _hated_ this town more than he did. Poor Edie took it migh-ty rough. She just wanted to be a normal little girl, have friends, make nice. This whole vendetta thing was just beyond her. She did her best to ignore it; what else can you do?”

“Vendetta? What are you talking about?”

“Oh Max Eisenhardt was always going on about ancient history, never could let sleeping dogs lie. That’s the thing about small towns, you just gotta put the past behind ya. Ain’t no use rubbing people’s faces in things what happened hundreds of years ago, is there? Edie understood that. Raised her son to understand that. Broke her daddy’s heart. Oh he tried, you know. Take the kid out for the day, picnic, park, just _plip, plip, plip_ fillin his head with that trash. Edie had enough of it finally, and _she_ cut _him_ off! Ha!” Dr. Agis took a mirthful minute to chuckle and wipe his eyes. In the pause Erik somehow managed to find his voice over the lump there.

“That’s not…my grandfather _died. Before I was born._ ”

“Hmm, hmm, good for you,” said Dr. Agis, drying his eyes. He turned maudlin again with a sigh. “She dinnit even bring the boy to her daddy’s funeral—now that’s sad. That’s going too far, I think. Well, but at least _she_ went. That’s gotta count for something.”

There was a knock at the door and Chrissy opened it, X-ray in a folder in hand.

“X-ray is rea—what are you doing in here?” she gasped.

“Blood test finished pretty quick,” Erik lied. He could tell she didn’t believe him, her mouth pursing up again.

“No lunch for me,” Dr. Agis sighed heavily and Erik actually felt a little bad until the man said, “Well, ain’t no harm bringing it along.” He munched his way back to the exam room, sounding like a baby nursing on a teat. Erik gagged again.

“Huh,” the man said as they shoved his X-ray onto the lightbox and turned it on.

“Goddamn that Spencer boy,” Chrissy hissed.

“What the hell is that?!” Erik yelped, wishing now more than ever that Charles was beside him, to hold his hand, to turn his face away, to tell him it was all a simple mistake.

On the X-ray was the pale ghostly outline of his collarbones, his ribs, his vertebrae—well, most of them. What was missing was an entire circle at the center of his chest, encompassing his breastbone, encroaching towards the edges of his ribs, towards his throat, towards his stomach, a deep dark pit of black, a perfect circle.

Erik jumped up and grabbed his satchel.

“Mr. Lensherr, it’s a _simple_ error!” Chrissy yelped as he made a run for it. “We’ll do another X-ray, it’s just a glitch! What about your heart arrhythmia?!”

Erik ignored her. Fuck that heart arrhythmia; fuck that glitch.  With this week, with this _house_ he couldn’t be sure anything was a glitch. Not that voice on the recorder, or the glass of water, or a million other things that had been happening to him. He couldn’t be sure, and he didn’t want to be sure, because it felt damned likely that it would only make him sure it wasn’t a glitch at all.

 


	52. Chapter 52

He was still trying to catch his breath with his head between his knees when his dad finally answered the phone.

“Hello?” the man asked suspiciously and Erik gasped audibly he was so thankful to hear his father’s voice.

“Dad!” he hiccuped, and paused as he got a hold of himself. What would his father do if he called him _crying_ across the line? Erik didn’t want to find out. Relief seemed to fill his father’s silence and the man laughed, the noise incongruous with how awful Erik felt.

“Erik! I didn’t realize it was you! Where you callin’ from?”

Oh, that was right. “Yeah, um, I had to get a new phone.”

“Had to get a new phone? What happened to your old phone?”

The absolute last thing he wanted to think about, that was what. “I just had to.”

“And they didn’t let you keep your old number?”

“No.”

“Did you ask? You shoulda asked. Jeeze, okay, let me get my planner so I got your new number...Can’t believe they didn’t let you keep your old number...”

“Dad, I called about--”

“Beth! You seen my planner?”

“Dad--”

“My contact book--Erik got a new number. Phone broke.”

“Dad, are you listening?”

“That’s what I tole him! Beth says you shoulda been able ta keep your ole number. You should go back and ask, Erik.”

“ _Dad, I swear to god! Shut up about the phone!_ ”

“Hmph,” was all his dad said, grumbling as he wrote down Erik’s new number in his goddamn little black book.

“I was calling about Grandpa,” Erik growled, now that his dad had shut up long enough to get it out. Anger gave him the strength to master his wavering voice and he couldn’t imagine his father suspected how close to tears he had been.

“Pop-pop? What about him?”

“No, not..not Pop-pop,” Erik said gritting out the childish family nickname for his father’s father. “Mom’s dad.”

Jakob was silent a moment, and Erik could imagine him, sitting back in his chair, pushing his reading glasses to the top of his head, rubbing his graying hair in confusion.

“Your mom’s dad...What on earth got you thinking ‘bout him?”

“Just...When did he die? Mom always said he died before I was born. Is that true?”

“...Hell, Erik,” Jakob sighed. “What’s got you thinking of this all of a sudden?”

“Dad, just answer me!”

The man was silent a moment longer, huffing loudly. “Erik, this is _not_ how I wanted to tell you.”

Despite the heat of the day, Erik’s skin went immediately freezing cold.

“So it’s true?” he murmured faintly, voice sounding far away and watery to his own ears.

“You musta been about eight...maybe nine. I’m sorry, Erik. Your mama just...well she had her own reasons and kept her own counsel. She just thought it’d be easier...or less to explain to just say it was before you were born and let it lie...I woulda tole you. Truth is, I just totally forgot. I mean it was all so long ago...”

“But... _why_? Why didn’t I ever meet him? What did he do that was so bad?”

“Oh you met him, you met him plenty of times.”

Erik stared at his own shoes in shock.

“What?”

“He never much cared for me, hated my guts, honestly, so he didn’t come by the house, but we’d send you over to him every once in a blue moon. I think your mama grit her teeth over even that, but he was her daddy, and your granddaddy.”

“ _Are you serious?! How could you never tell me about this?!_ ”

“Honestly, I’m surprised you don’t remember it. You musta been six or seven when your mom put an end to it.”

“An end to it? What do you mean?”

“An end to you two hanging out. I don’t know all the details,” Jakob grunted heavily, exhausted by being dragged into all this ancient history. It told Erik how guilty he felt at having let this slip his mind, for him to delve into it now rather than put him off. “I just got home from work one day and your mama was in a state and tole me she didn’t want you being around him. I mean I was scared at first--thinkin it might a been...well...Thinking it’s something we need to get like the police or something...But she promised it wasn’t anything like that.”

Erik tried to muster up relief that it didn’t appear he was molested as a child, but it felt like an afterthought. _He was just ‘plip, plip, plip’ fillin his head with trash..._ Was that what his mother was boycotting? But still, to tell him his grandfather had _died..._ To suddenly, so suddenly put an end to it...It had to be pretty bad, didn’t it? Worse than the old man just running his mouth...

“And she never told you why?”

“I mean I tried but...your mama could be tight-lipped about things when she wanted to be. That family...well, she was used to keeping her secrets, even from me.”

This couldn’t be true. This couldn’t be his mother.

When he pictured her in his mind it was as a beacon of light, completely open, smiling, sharing. To think of her like this, as this closed off, secretive enigma, shadowy, hidden...It was too different from the mother he knew...the mother he thought he knew.

His breathing felt tight, as if his body itself were protesting this new knowledge, trying to push it out.

“Dad, what is that supposed to mean? I mean...this is the first I’m hearing about any of this!”

It seemed impossible this could be the first he was hearing about this. In this town where everybody knew everybody else’s business; he couldn’t believe the fucking post man hadn’t told him all this ages ago.

“I don’t know what to tell you, Erik,” his dad said apologetically. “Your mama didn’t like to talk about that part of her life and I tried not to upset her with askin too much. From what I can tell there was no special reason needed to dislike her daddy. He was a miserable man and until his wife died she was a miserable woman. You mama just wanted to get away from all that.”

“What about the vendetta?”

“Vendetta? What vendetta?”

“I don’t know! Did grandpa have...some kind of vendetta?”

“Hell, he was such a hateful old coot I’m sure he had plenty. Listen, Erik--I’m sorry this is all hittin you so quick. I’m sorry I never thought to sit you down and walk you through it all. Next time you come up, we can sit down, go over it. Right now I’ve gotta go.”

“Dad!” Erik yelped.

“Yeah?”

“Is...is there anything else I need to know?”

The pause seemed to last forever, but finally his dad said, “No. Is there anything _I_ need to know?’

Erik took a deep breath, arranging his thoughts. “...No. I love you.”

“I love you, too. Keep well.”

“You, too. Bye.”

Erik ran his finger across the blank screen of his phone, hot in his hand from use. Despite this, he felt chilled. In his mind he saw his mother, as he’d seen her many times. There she was standing in the kitchen, making bread. The sun was in her dark hair and she was shining, and it seemed to Erik he could actually smell the well-remembered scent of fresh bread and flour and sunshine.

But, new to his memory, was a sense of dread. A sense of secrecy. He saw her, the sunshine, her smile, and it felt like a fake smile. A smile that was hiding something.

Actually, it reminded him of Charles. Something joyful but at the same time terrifying and sad. It was even sadder with his mother. With Charles there was hope, a chance to overcome this secrecy. With his mother...he couldn’t go to her now, ask her what had happened, ask her to explain herself.

He was filled with hatred even more than grief, hatred towards that awful house. It was not only for the trauma, the nightmares and the doctor visit and even the possible psychosis. Now the house had taken from him what he’d never thought he could ever lose: his faith in his mother.

He wanted, more than anything, to have her back again and with him now, to lay his head in her lap and smell the scent of warm bread, feel her hands in his hair, listen to whatever explanation she had to make all of this better, make all of this go away. There had to be some explanation.

He grabbed his phone again and dialed Charles. It wasn’t his mother, it wasn’t the answers he needed, but it was the only thing he thought might make him feel better right now.

Which made it even more aggravating when Charles didn’t answer. At a loss, he stood slowly, legs wobbling and half-asleep from sitting so long on the hot concrete. What now?

 

* * *

 

Erik couldn’t go back to work and be harassed into doing his actual job, and he couldn’t go home--couldn’t imagine sitting there with the possible residual stench of burnt plastic, alone with nothing but silence and paranoia. He went to a cafe instead, and researched everything he could about his grandfather, which wasn’t much.

Max Eisenhardt belonged to no clubs, participated in no city events, didn’t even go to synagogue. The one thing he did find was an obituary, and even that was disgustingly sparse.

 _Max Eisenhardt passed away March 3rd at the age of 79. Max was born to Jakob and Rachel Eisenhardt (deceased). Max is preceded in death by his wife of 53 years, Rivka, and his son, Jakob. He is survived by a daughter and grand-son._ The remainder, listing date and time of services and donating to charity rather than flowers, actually took up more space than the obituary itself. And to think his mother must have written this about her own father! It was chilling.

He hadn’t read his mother’s obituary for a long time, but he knew it was a hell of a lot longer than that, and much more affectionate. The words _adored wife and mother_ stuck with him. Meanwhile any adjective in his grandfather’s obituary was living a distinctly lonely life.

But the absolutely weirdest part of it, and he still hadn’t decided if it was as terrifying as he thought it was, was when Irene came to get his empty coffee mug and see if he wanted anything else. Irene was at some indeterminable age post 60 but pre death. She’d used to bag groceries before she got this gig, and he knew her as well as he knew everyone else in this town, maybe even slightly better as she’d used to try to guess what they were making for dinner based on their groceries and as a kid this had been a fascinating game to him, to the point where he frequently forced his mother to buy random ingredients just to throw her off.

So when he said, “Hey, Irena, do you remember my grandfather?” he had expected a certain openness. And it was there at first, the bright eyed smile and “Pop-pop?”

Only when he corrected her and explained he meant his mom’s dad did her smile waver then disappear. With a shrug she said “I didn’t know him that well,” and walked off.

Was there a reason that felt so sinister? Everyone knew everything in this town. Knowing him or not knowing him should have mattered not at all in a place this enmeshed in gossip. She should have known everything he had ever done or been suspected of doing. It was madness for her to give up an opportunity to talk his ear off about anything or anyone dead or living within 20 miles. People in this town loved nothing better than talking about other people in this town.

Thinking this over for the millionth time since it had happened, still getting nowhere, Erik spun his phone in circles against his hipbone, watching the dull reflective face. Should he try Charles again? The man hadn’t answered his phone all day, and his only reward was a stilted, mechanical voice telling him this mail box was full. Go figure Charles was too much of a workaholic, or else too disorganized, to even clean out his voice mail box.

What was he supposed to do? When the cafe had closed and he’d had to go somewhere, this had seemed his best bet for running into Charles, but now he wasn’t sure. Was Charles through with the house? That seemed unlikely. Without Erik interrupting him, with Alex’s enthusiasm driving him ever onward, it wasn’t unfeasable that he’d be hard at it for hours more to come. Possibly all night. He suspected that, if provided with food and endless excitement, Charles might be capable of working for days without sleep or thought of the outside world. Where did that leave Erik? He couldn’t sit in the motel parking lot twiddling his thumbs forever.

Sighing heavily, he shoved his phone into his bag and got out of the car. His one chance was to somehow finagle a room key from the front desk. At least then he could await the man’s return indoors with the AC blasting. It was too hot, sitting here baking in his car. Maybe he could even be appropriately stripped down to nothing by time Charles arrived, although the thought of amassing the energy needed for actual sex was leaving him exhausted before he’d even removed so much as a sock. Maybe a quick nap would give him the necessary enthusiasm. Maybe Charles wouldn’t mind doing absolutely _all_ of the work.

Now, how to play this out? Beg or browbeat? Maybe start off flippantly confident, like he was definitely entitled to this room key, then if that didn’t work beg, then if that didn’t work threaten. Could he pick the door lock? No, that’s right, it was a card reader. Damn technology. Total waste of his emergency lock-picking set taking up space in his satchel. Stick with the original plan then.

Erik stood for a dizzying second in the doorway as his eyes adjusted to the relative darkness inside, sunspots dancing before his eyes. When they cleared the receptionist was popping her gum at him and Alex was waving from a payphone in the corner. Erik saw that he wasn’t actually _using_ the payphone, was in fact talking on his cellphone while _hovering_ at the payphone, apparently for the use of the open yellow pages beside him. The boy, his greeting complete, went back to his phone call, completely ignoring Erik now, smiling winningly into the receiver as he cajoled, “Well I know it’s short notice, darlin’, that’s why I juss _knew_ I had to call you. Ain’t nobody else could put this together so quick, and it is just _so_ important to Misser Zavier--to the whole _town_!”

He saw just how pointless it would be to try and interrupt the young man, and didn’t bother. If Alex was here then Charles must be too, amazing as that was. Cheering silently, he took the stairs two by two, knocking jauntily when he got to Charles’ door.

He was a bit surprised when Charles answered it mid-knock. He was even more surprised that the man was holding a towel of ice to his face, partially blocking out the sight of a burgeoning black eye.

“What the hell happened to you!” he balked, reaching out to peel back the edge of the towel. Charles jerked away before he could even touch him.

“What are you doing here?” Charles sounded genuinely surprised, and not altogether happy.

“I…what…we…” he stammered on the doorstep. Under his blabbering, Charles’ surprised look faded until he was left seemingly dead to interest. The man turned away, genuinely not caring if Erik followed or not. Too stunned to think, Erik moved on instinct, stopping the door from shutting in his face and pushing his way inside.

His heart was in his throat when he asked, “What’s going on?”   

“Oh, _now_ you care what’s going on!” Charles bit out, going about the room throwing things around angrily. He grabbed a shirt off the bed and threw it at his duffel bag in the corner, threw some paperwork at the desk, threw a tube of toothpaste into his toiletries bag on the counter. He stood in front of his make-shift desk but apparently decided none of his work effects were throwable, looked around for more things to throw, but that about covered it. The place was surprisingly tidy, compared to the last time Erik had seen it. “Now, hours and fucking _hours_ later you care what’s going on! I’ve only been calling you all day! I should have fucking known—”

What exactly Charles should have known Erik didn’t learn because he laughed out loud just then, effectively earning the furious look Charles leveled at him with his one good eye.

“You were worried!” he said, trying to explain what he found so relieving as to earn a laugh like that. But it didn’t do the trick, and if anything Charles looked more furious, before he got a disgusting amount of control of himself and shut it down. It was like watching one of those metal shutters they use over store fronts come down, shutting off all view to the interior. Charles stood before him, jaw tight, completely closed for business.

“I was not worried,” he said stiffly. It was as if he had been tricked into the sentiment and now refused to give Erik the satisfaction of knowing he had been tricked. “Anyway, you’re obviously doing just fine, and I’ve got a lot of work to do so...”

Erik couldn’t help but feel as if he were being dismissed, and was shocked. What was going on? Charles hadn’t even asked him what had happened at the doctor, or anything about his day, and Charles was usually so curious. Even apart from curiosity, the man acted as if he didn’t even care about what Erik had been through today, was simply looking at him as if he couldn’t wait to be rid of him. What had happened?

The disparity, the sudden change from this morning to now had Erik literally shaking. This was _Charles_ , Charles couldn’t be doing this to him, acting so strangely towards him. Although everything else in his life was going to shit, he hadn’t ever thought Charles could join the list of terribly strange things happening. He had come here for Charles, for his rock of relative normalcy, for his port in the storm. And it was as if the port was still there but psychotically changed, empty, ghostly, silent.

Erik realized that, if this port was gone, he had no other to turn to, and shook harder.

“What’s going on? What’s wrong with you?”

“Nothing’s wrong with me!” Charles growled, but then tightened that too, settling back demurely, impersonally. “I promised I’d take Alex out to dinner, to thank him for all his hard work today. I’ve got to get ready.”

“I’ll come too,” Erik said. He’d figure this thing out then. Charles might be tight-lipped about whatever was wrong, but Alex wouldn’t be.

“No, thank you. We’ve got a lot of work still to discuss over dinner and you’d just be uncomfortable,” Charles said, but Erik got the feeling Charles would be the uncomfortable one. But why would that be? Charles had wanted him this morning, wanted to be with him, just hours ago--what had changed?

Charles didn’t allow the question again, motioning to the door and saying, “Now if you’ll excuse me...”

“You want me to leave?” Erik balked. Leave and go where? Where could he go without Charles by his side? He hadn’t realized how much he’d been counting on Charles’ support to get through his day, to make everything that had happened to him better. What was he supposed to do without that? How could he do this on his own?

“I’m busy, Erik,” the man said, coldly. Erik realized, shocked, that he was getting the same treatment as Raven. Charles was shutting him down, pushing him away, but he was too angry to even do it with the fake smile he treated Raven with. This was too much.

“Well I’m not leaving! Not until you tell me what the hell is going on! What the fuck is wrong with you? You think you can just give me this bland attitude and I won’t know you’re pissed about something? You’re not fooling anyone! You can’t hide it from me, I know something is going on--just tell me!”

Charles’ face reddened with this speech, mouth twisting angrily, but he still wouldn’t give in.

“Fine then,” he huffed, tossing down his ice pack and grabbing his wallet and keys. “ _I’ll_ leave.”

Erik shoved the door closed as Charles tried to open it, turning the man and pinning him to it. The tightly closed shutter on Charles’ emotions was coming loose and he could see in his eyes how angry the brunet was, and was at a loss.

“Please,” he gasped, chest aching, so confused. “Please just tell me. After all the shit that’s been happening today and the past days--Charles, I can’t do this without you. Please, whatever it is, just tell me. We can work through this. I can’t do this without you. Please.”

Charles wavered under his hands, brow furrowed slightly. Erik could see him trembling on the precipice, either about to fall in or take a step back. _Please, please fall. I’m here. Fall. Don’t walk away from me._

“Who’s Mark?” the man blurted out, immediately regretted it if that grimace were any sign, that glance at the door--but it was too late for that. The dam was down and the words were loose. “I told Alex about that whole cop thing this morning and _he_ knew right away. He told me, showed me...How could you not have told me? After all that trash about wanting to be together and you and me--and all along you had this gorgeous cop best friend you’re in lov--” Charles choked on the word and continued on a different vein instead, looking solely at the ground.” And, okay, I _was_ perhaps slightly worried about you, today, but you didn’t even--or answer my calls--you had _Mark_ , you didn’t need--”

Erik cut him off there, holding his face, making him look up at him.

“Charles,” he huffed a laugh, relieved that this was all it was. Charles wasn’t possessed, or insane--the House hadn’t gotten to him, too. Charles was _jealous._ “Charles, Mark and I, we’re not...Charles, he’s straight!”

Charles was not appeased, scoffing as he shouldered Erik off him, walking away from him. “No one’s that straight!”

Erik caught him again, turning him. “Mark is. Charles, he’s just my friend. I’ve known him for years--nothing has ever happened or _will_ ever happen.”

“But you wish it would.”

It felt as if he’d swallowed an ice cube, one that grew colder seeing the hurt look in Charles’ eyes grow as his silence continued, feeling the man pull out of his grip, try to turn away, before Erik stilled him, gripped him tighter.

“I used to. Charles...anything happening there, it was...it was the imagination of a guy in a small town with very few prospects and a lot of free time to fantasize about his incredibly straight friend. But you...”

“You never said anything about him. I had to hear about it from Alex--how beautiful this guy is and how in love with him you are--”

“Stop that. Forget what Alex fucking Summers says, I’m saying I’m not in love with Mark. Charles, you’re _real_. I want you because you’re real and he’s something I made up a long time ago. I want you. You’ve got to believe me.”

The man stared him in the eyes, those two bright blue orbs trying to see to the bottom of him, see what secrets or lies hid behind his eyes. They grew scared, realizing this was an impossibility. And he grew scared too, knowing of all the things he’d asked Charles to do, this might be the one thing he couldn’t:  _believe him_.

“Charles, at some point you’ve just got to trust me.” And even saying it he knew how crazy that was. Had the man trusted anyone outside of work, trusted anyone with his emotions since he was a teenager? Since Raven? Was he asking Charles to do something he was incapable of? Use some part of himself that had been damaged and unrepaired for years?

Shocked, he felt Charles’ arms slide around his waist, felt the man’s body, still tight with anxiety but _there,_ pressing against him. His own arms moved instinctively, pulling Charles closer, pulling the man to rest his head on his shoulder, pressing his face to the brunet's dark hair.

“I can try,” Charles murmured against his shoulder, barely audible. “But I can’t...I can't promise anything.”

Erik nodded, feeling something loosen in his chest, feeling that ever-present ache ease as Charles relaxed slightly in his arms. He realized how much he’d been relying on this, on being held and holding to make everything right again, to calm and comfort him after today.

“I admit it,” the man sighed, pulling back to smile slightly at him, brush his collar with his fingertips. “I was perhaps more than a _little_ worried about you.”

Erik knew where this segue was going to lead and put it off with a kiss, was relieved anew when Charles didn’t push him away, intent on answers, but pulled him closer, kissed him deeply. Though the man was less permissive when Erik pushed him back towards the bed.

“No way,” Charles growled, pushing back. “There’s no time. I meant it when I said I promised Alex I’d take him to dinner.”

“Did you also mean it when you said I couldn’t come?” Erik teased, combing Charles’ loose hair back behind his ear as the man blushed.

“I might have been less serious about that part. Though we _will_ be discussing work. I’m not sure you’ll _want_ to come.”

“Wherever you’re going, that’s where I want to go. My days are much too weird without you there.”

“Why? What happened? What did the doctor say? It looks worse.” Charles pulled aside his collar as he said this and Erik pouted as he backed up out of his grip.

“Thanks, you really know just what to say to a guy.”

“I just mean you couldn’t see it over your collar this morning,” the man explained as he went to grab his ice pack again, rearranging the ice before fitting it back to his black eye. Which reminded him.

“What about you? Is that a human shiner or a ghost shiner?”

“Shiner? Oh, my black eye? Well, quid pro quo. What happened at the doctor’s?”

Rolling his eyes, Erik flopped onto the bed, so exhausted he was half-tempted to blow off dinner and take a nap instead. If only Charles could be convinced to skive off with him...

“I’ll tell you if you get in bed with me.”

Charles scowled at him from his knees but looked tempted.

“Clothes stay on.”

“Deal.”

Charles climbed in beside him, tangling them together with a leg over Erik’s waist, elbow heavy on his chest, ice pack slowly freezing his neck. Despite the cold, it felt so nice to have Charles heavy and folded against him, on him and near him and _there_. He couldn’t believe they had spent the whole day apart--no wonder it had been so shitty.

“Okay, now spill. What happened with the doctor? Why weren’t you answering your phone?”

Erik blinked, remembering. “Oh, about that...” He knew he had made big speeches about telling each other things, about honesty and all that junk, but he found he just could _not_ get it out. Maybe tonight, when they were alone together with no one waiting on them, when they were lounging in post-coital bliss...yes, he could stand to tell Charles then. But not now. Not rushed and clothed and fresh from a fight.

“Well, my phone was on the fritz so I had to bring it in to get a new one and they gave me a new number, so I haven’t actually been getting _any_ calls from you. A fact you could have learned if _you’d_ been answering _your_ phone.”

“What?” Charles balked, and pulled out his phone to see the satisfyingly long list of missed calls.

“See?”

“I didn’t recognize the number. I can’t just answer any random number that pops up on my phone! You should have left a message.”

“A bit hard when your mailbox is full!”

“Oh,” Charles blushed. “Right. I’ve been meaning to do that...Well, you could have texted me!”

It was Erik’s turn to blush now. He genuinely hadn’t thought of that.

“Idiot,” Charles sighed and lay back down beside him, cuddling close again. “So? What did the doctor say, then? Did he have any ideas?”

Erik purposefully did not think of the X-ray. It was a glitch, like they said. He was just stressed at the time, that’s why it had seemed so ominous. Now, in Charles’ arms, he realized how silly he’d been. It didn’t matter. Charles didn’t need to know. Maybe tonight. Maybe together tonight.

“Anemia,” he stated.

“Anemia?”

“Yeah, iron deficiency. Lots of bruising. Just need some more iron.”

“I don’t understand though. I mean, it’s not your whole body that’s bruising like that--didn’t he think he was strange it was just this one area?”

“It’s pretty standard, actually,” Erik claimed, and luckily Charles frowned but seemed to buy it. Was Charles learning to trust him, to believe him, starting with his lies? Erik felt terrible, but didn’t correct it.

“Well did he give you anything for it?”

“Um, yeah, I’ve got a prescription I’ve got to pick up, actually.” Technically true, if you blurred the lines a bit.

“Perfect, we can pick it up on the way to dinner. Um...if you really did want to come, I mean.”

“I really do. Now, your turn. Who is Raven out murdering as we speak for daring to injure you?”

“Raven doesn’t know, actually. She took off for lunch and decided for the first time ever that I don’t really need a babysitter in order to do my actual job.”

Erik got a boost to his ego--had she actually listened to what he’d been telling her at lunch?

“She is going to be pissed when she finds out what she missed.”

“She is not because we are not going to tell her. And I’m not going to tell you until you agree to that. There are some things she just does not need to know.”

Erik felt a bit justified about keeping that whole X-ray thing to himself now. Maybe Charles was right. Maybe there were some things just not worth sharing.

“Okay, agreed. Now tell me.”

Sighing, Charles rolled over onto his back, thinking of the best way to put this. From this view the man’s black eye was in profile and Erik pushed the ice pack away to get a better view of it. The swelling was pretty minimal at this point but there was already a very dark purple mark forming, starting at the inside corner and fanning out slightly across his eyelid, mostly focusing itself under Charles’ eye, making the bright blue stand out all the more. There was an accompanying abrasion on Charles’ cheekbone that would have its own bruise soon.

Erik felt Raven’s wrath rise up in him and struggled to keep his voice cavalier in order to get the name of the person who would very soon be beaten to within an inch of their life.

“Whoever it was meant business, I’d say.”

“Do you know a guy...a, um...science teacher? Banner?”

Erik gulped, suddenly rethinking this whole beating thing. Maybe if he got a big group of people in on it...like at least ten. Otherwise he wouldn’t trust his chances.

“Banner did this?! What the fuck was Banner even doing there? He’s not Jewish.”

“We were doing interviews at the house; it’s not just about seeing if the house only responds to Jewish people. We were also testing different personalities, and Alex suggested Banner as he has some anger management issues and it turns out he was absolutely right.”

“Why the hell did you want someone with anger issues?”

“Well there’s a theory as to why paranormal entities lash out at particular people. Since the house is active enough, I thought we’d test it out. There are certain studies pointing to emotional symmetry, or mirroring. I wanted to see if a non-Jewish person could ellicit a reaction if they fed their emotional activity at a high enough level to set off mirroring.”

“I’m sorry, what?”

“It basically means that a paranormal site or entity mirrors back and magnifies the emotions fed into it. A person exuding negative emotions creates a negative reaction, a positive emotion gets a more positive response, or can at least depower a negative reaction.”

“You lost me.”

“Okay, you meet a person and they are very aggressive, and you’re aggressive back, and they are _more_ aggressive back--it amplifies the aggression. You’re passive and it removes that loop from the equation--it diminishes the aggression.”

“Or it just gets your ass kicked all the more easily. You’re saying, what? If you’re nice to the house it’ll be nice back? Didn’t work for me; I was perfectly nice.”

“Ha! Anyway, the science isn’t all there as of yet. But Mr. Banner’s natural, seemingly ever-present aggression did antagonize some sort of reaction from the house, which he was none too pleased about, and which he apparently blamed me for. Thus the black eye. Well worth it, though. Like you said, he’s not even Jewish, and the house still reacted to him.”

“Maybe it’s getting stronger,” Erik said dully, earning a very nervous glance.

“Who said that? I never said that.”

 _But Darwin did._ He didn’t say that. Instead he went with, “Well it is a beauty. Want me to kiss it better?” in his most lascivious voice, leaning up to do just that. But Charles just rolled his eyes and pushed him away.

“Come on, we need to get your prescription before dinner. Get up.”

“Wait,” Erik groaned. “I’m not ready to get up.” But Charles was shoveling him out of the bed anyway.

As Charles sat down to put on his shoes Erik crawled over and laid his head in the man’s lap.

“Carry me.”

“Was it really as bad as all that?”

Blinking at Charles’ inseam, purring inwardly as the man abandoned his shoes to to comb through his hair, he said “I want to tell you something,” and realized he meant it.

“Yes?” Charles asked, leaning over him and kissing his shoulder. The man smelled like sunshine and cologne, rather than fresh bread, but it was still soothing.

“Just...something weird happened today. Apart from me going to an actual doctor, I mean.”

Charles was silent, fingers in his hair quietly inducing him to continue.

“Apparently my grandpa was a total psychopath and I’m somehow just now finding out about it. I mean...like a real nut job.”

“Is that strange? I don’t know plenty of things about my grandparents, I’m sure.”

“You don’t get it. In this town...everyone knows everything about everyone--how could no one have mentioned this to me before?”

“I doubt they would have wanted to remind you your grandfather was unstable. I’m sure, especially in a small town, there are things plenty of people just don’t believe to be polite conversation.”

“That’s not all. My mom told me he died before I was born but actually I was like nine. And even though I hung out with him for years, I don’t remember anything about him. What is that? And why would she tell me that? She never lied to me before--not that I know of...Why did she lie about something as huge as that?”

“If he was really unhinged maybe she thought it was better you not deal with that knowledge. Maybe it was bad enough you blocked out your memories of him...”

Maybe maybe maybe.

“Erik,” the man said finally, stroking the nape of his neck. “The fact is, you’ll never know for sure. Families have all sorts of issues, and sometimes very few answers. I should know. Whatever this boiled down to, you may never know for sure. It’s rotten, but but it happens and there’s nothing to be done about it now. You’ve got enough to worry about without these ancient family squabbles.”

He blinked, eyelashes catching on Charles’ pants leg. He turned, chin resting on the man’s bony knee, smiling up at him.

“That made me feel better.”

“Really?” Charles asked, pleased with himself.

“Yeah, actually,” he grinned, and knelt up to kiss the man soundly.

 

* * *

 

“What’s all that?” Erik balked as he rejoined Charles and Alex, prescription in hand. Charles looked up from his basket, chock full even though Erik had left them not even five minutes ago.

“Just a few things!” Charles claimed and Erik reached around him to inspect it more closely.

“Tiger balm, thermometer, ice pack, heating pad, Pedialite--Charles, this is for babies!”

“It’s good nutrition! It’ll help with your anemia. I got Ensure, too, and iron supplements as well as a multivitamin. And you’re taking all of them. What did you get?”

“Just the prescription,” he said, holding up his bag. He didn’t go into details, and didn’t feel much relief holding it. This might not help with the fact he was slowly turning into a mottled plum, but he at least wouldn’t have to suffer from sleeplessness on top of everything else. And if sleeping pills didn’t work he knew he had a full pack of NoDoze at home, an occupational necessity since he was prone to procrastinating when forced to write articles of little to no interest to him, which was pretty much all the time. Any relief he felt came from the idea that, should sleeping pills fail him, he could just pull a page from _Nightmare on Elm Street_ and never sleep again.

“Come on, I’m starving.”

He was a bit disconcerted when both Charles and Alex checked their phones at this, and Alex said, “Still on schedule. We should be fine.”

Charles smiled winningly. “Okay, dinner it is!”

 


	53. Chapter 53

Erik couldn’t help but marvel at the competent way Charles shifted gears as they exited off the highway, following his phone’s enigmatic advice. The man was talking energetically about what a pity it was Alex had to go home, but Erik could spare few brain cells for the topic. Charles still hadn’t told him where they were going, and he hadn’t recognized the address Alex gave him, yet even that enigma was taking a back seat to the way the man’s leg muscles rippled as he shifted gears.

“You just had to get a stick shift, didn’t you?” Erik asked, not sure and not caring if he’d interrupted the brunet.

“It was all they had,” Charles smiled back at him knowingly. “How was I supposed to know it would be such a turn on for you?”

There was no logical way for Charles to have known, and yet it somehow still felt as if this could not be a coincidence. Maybe it was because he’d never learned, or because it was an important part of all highly masculine car-chase scenes, but he’d always found the ability to drive stick very erotic.

“I don’t suppose this mysterious place we’re going to has some tucked-away little spot we could... take care of things, hmm?”

“It’s not mysterious--I told you, it’s an interview. And you need to finish off that Ensure before I trust your health enough for a roll in the hay.” Erik grimaced, which was not lost on Charles despite the distraction of driving. “If you’d eaten dinner I wouldn’t have to force you to drink your nutrients!”

“I did eat dinner!”

“You probably ate one single mouthful of your burger over the course of the hour we were there. The rest you just picked at. Don’t think I didn’t notice. I thought you liked that place?”

“I guess I just wasn’t hungry,” he lied. In actuality, he’d found it difficult to eat as it meant taking his eyes off his surroundings. The diner was a popular place even on a regular day; with a celebrity like Charles to be ogled over, it had been packed. And Erik couldn’t shake the feeling that they were all staring at him. Not Charles (at least, not constantly Charles) but _him._ When he looked up he was sure he’d just missed their stares, any glance at his food brought the weight of their eyes back on him, hot and stifling. It was impossible to eat under those circumstances.

Why were they staring at him? What did they know that he didn’t?

“ _Your destination is on your right_ ,” the phone blared, and Charles pulled into a parking lot at a strip mall. Erik stared at the spattering of businesses with confusion, Mrs. Pickles’ Coffee, Movie Buff Movie Rentals, Gargoyle Dungeon.

“Stay in the car,” Charles said, unbuckling his seat belt.

“The fuck I will!”

“I won’t be a minute! It’s just a quick interview. I’ll be right back.”

“I am not sitting in this fucking car like some disobedient dog!”

“Well then you should have learned how to drive a manual and you could drive yourself someplace more interesting!”

Erik reached over the man to pull his door closed and prevent him from leaving until they settled this.

“Why can’t I come? You were going to bring Alex--how is Alex a better bodyguard than me?”

“I was only bringing Alex because he has a genuine interest in my work!”

“I have a genuine interest in your work! I mean if we’re going to date I’ve got to, don’t I?”

“Don’t get ahead of yourself,” Charles said with a roll of the eyes, and dislodged Erik from his door in order to leave. Erik scrabbled out as well.

“Erik, I’m serious!” the man growled at him.

“ _I’m_ serious! Why did you even bring me if you just wanted me to sit in the car for an hour? Why not just drop me off with Alex, or send me packing like Raven?”

“I did not send Raven packing--she decided to take the night off. A sure sign of either insanity or a sinister trap, sure, but I’ll deal with that later.”

“Okay then why? Why invite me?”

Charles blushed mightily and stammered, “There was no--no reason! It was just convenience. I just thought it’d be--easier to go home afterwards, if you rode with me.” Somehow he managed to blush even harder. “Not home! That’s not--I don’t--”

Erik had to stop him before Charles choked to death on his own embarrassment. He put a hand over the man’s mouth until he stopped tripping over himself to backtrack. When the brunet was capable of looking at him with that annoyed, rather put-upon mien, Erik released him just enough to kiss him.

“Let’s go do this interview and go home.”

Charles pretended to tackle him as he walked to the cafe and then pretended to bite him menacingly on the shoulder. Erik held onto his hands where they clasped around his waist. “No biting! No wonder I’m all bruised.”

“Does that mean no spanking tonight?”

“Don’t be rash.”

“Agreed. In other news, why are you going into this cafe?”

Erik stopped just on point of entering, turning in Charles’ arms.

“We’re not meeting the mystery guest at the cafe? Where then?”

Grinning, Charles led them back to the Gargoyle store. Confused, and slightly worried for the mental standing of someone who would meet at a place like this, Erik stared at the window display of a skeleton dressed up like a gypsy looking into a giant crystal ball, dusty spider webs and dead flowers abounding.

“You’ve got to be kidding me. What freak did you get to meet you here?”

“He owns the place. None other than the illustrious Mr. Frog you laughed so hard at me about this morning!”

“You found Mr. Frog?” Erik balked. He’d never heard of such a man. How was there a single person in this town he’d never heard of?

“Well, close. He’s apparently called Toad, according to Alex. So I wasn’t that far off, really!”

“Toad!” Erik groaned, dropping his head into his hands. Of course!

“You know him?”

“I told you, everyone knows everyone in this town. And his name’s not really Toad.” Although he honestly couldn’t think of what it truly was. He knew that the guy was called Toad because he was a green looking gangly thing who’d had a sort of goiter on his throat at some point in his teen years which corrective surgery had never been able to dispel from the town’s long memory. That knowledge had sufficed just fine his whole life, and this was the first time he’d ever wished he knew more about the guy, if only to impress Charles.

“Obviously I know his name is not literally Toad,” Charles said, rolling his eyes as he pushed his way through the jingling door. “Your town isn’t _that_ bizarre.”

He was almost sure Charles was changing that opinion as they adjusted themselves to the blood-red lighting inside the shop and simultaneously triggered the witch at the entrance which lunged and screamed at them. They both jumped, although they had differing opinions as to _where_ to jump and Erik ended up knocking Charles into a rack of incense. He grabbed him to stop the smaller man from upending the entire display, and so they stood there at the entrance clutching each other waiting for their heart rates to return to normal.

“Wur closed!” a voice growled from the shadows. Erik knew his town had a universal accent which could lovingly be referred to as ‘hick’, but hearing this voice made him realize that even people in _his_ town would think this accent indecently back-woods. It sounded like something that lived in a swamp. In vain he tried to make out its owner in the shop as his eyes slowly adjusted to the disturbing lighting.

Before them were rows upon rows of tacky Halloween decorations, questionable dried herbs, and a hodgepodge of the occult.

“It’s not on eight yet,” Charles called back, leading them down the first aisle on a search for the speaker. Erik followed close behind, hands on the man’s hips as if the shop could swallow either one of them up at any moment.

“Then wur _almose_ closed.” The voice had growled from just behind them and Erik whirled around, went to push Charles behind him and was confused when Charles went to do the same, their arms tangling in their attempts to protect.

At the entrance to the aisle was a small, underfed shadow, rubbing its hands on a towel, possibly interrupted in disposing of a body. They backed up slowly.

“Are you...Are you Mr...Do you happen to be called Toad?” Charles squeaked. It was unclear if he was more perturbed by his necessary faux-pas or by their eerie surroundings.

“Who wansa know?” The shadow took a step forward, bathed now in the blood lighting, two sharp, glittering eyes in a weak, weasel-like face. To keep space between them they took a reciprocating step backwards.

“I’m Charles Xavier, and this is Erik Lensherr--” Charles had his mouth open to go on, but they were interrupted by a booming crash from somewhere in the store. Toad continued as if nothing had happened.

“Whale hell! Erik Lensherr!” he cackled. “Why dinnit ya say so?”

Toad didn’t wait for Charles to shake his hand, just grabbed it and started pumping like he was trying to get water from a near-empty well. And then immediately went on to Erik, staring up at him eagerly. There was something about the man, his undersized gangly body like a worm-ridden street dog, his too-wide smile with its peg-like teeth, his gimlet eyes... Erik couldn’t tell if the handshake was going on for too long or if it just felt that way, but he pulled his hand from Toad’s cool, slick one regardless. His elbow immediately struck an impediment. A warm, breathing impediment.

He turned, Charles turning with him, to face this new addition. In tandem their heads tilted back. And kept tilting back. Tall as he was, Erik didn’t think his head had been in this position since the last time he’d looked at a passing airplane, or the sun...around noon.

“This’z my cousin, Vic. He musta heard you were here; he’s got quite a lil crush on ya--innit ‘at right, Vic?” Toad guffawed. Vic smiled down at them bashfully, a Sasquatch-sized child.

“Let’s hope he bottoms otherwise I’ll never get you back in one piece,” Charles murmured out of the corner of his mouth.

“Oh hi Misser Lensherr,” the bulk said, watching his toes as he about scuffed them clear through the floorboards. His voice was so deep it made Erik’s bones vibrate, like standing next to the speaker at a rock concert. “How’re you doin’ these parts? What...um... _what’re_...”

The man immediately turned and thundered back to wherever he had come from, possibly a shrine-ridden lair, bottles clinking on the shelves as he passed.

“He’s shy. Doan worry--hail be back,” Toad chuckled.

“I’m not fighting him for you,” Charles hissed. “I’m very sorry but I’m just not.”

 

* * *

 

Toad gave them a quick tour of the back rooms, a dirty bathroom, an overflowing store room, an equally overflowing break room that reeked of Pizza Bagels and a latchkey childhood. By time they settled in for their interview Vic had recovered from his embarrassment enough to join them, which did not improve the space-issue. Between file cabinets and dirty dishes, boxes of overflow wares and seedy romance novels, they managed to squeeze themselves around a rickety table.

Charles was shoved up against him pleasantly enough on one side, but Vic had claimed his other side and Erik wasn’t sure the man wasn’t intermittently sniffing his hair.

“Make him stop,” Erik hissed.

“Unless he shrinks to half his current size, I’m not making him do anything. _You_ make him.”

Erik didn’t think he’d need half size, but he’d like a good quarter off, preferably from the top.

Charles, legs crossed primly one over the other, opened his notebook, tucking his hair behind his ear and staring up at Toad as the jaundiced man pointed out antiquated photos on his peeling walls. There were no blood lights back here, but Toad wasn’t much improved by this. He had a waxy, sallow complexion the fluorescents only highlighted, and it also revealed his sickly figure: he’d had had to make his own notches in his belt to cinch it tight enough.  

“Now thisun I cut outta tha paper, just a lil thang they had in thur bout when tha house got sold to tha city. Errybody went wild on thatun, host-orical site an’ all that--load a trash.”

Toad was obviously poised to continue--he had an entire wall of obsessive pictures, graphs, timelines, and newspaper clippings--but Charles interrupted him with a very British-sounding clearing of his throat, even raising his hand slightly.

“Um, sorry...just...for the record, what would you prefer I list your name as?”

Erik grinned. The man sounded so posh when he was embarrassed. Charles didn’t miss his grin, and elbowed him lightly.

“Fer whut record?” Toad asked, eyeing him suspiciously.

“Well,” Charles blushed. “Just when...if I write this up. For a journal or something, or...in correspondence.”

“Toad’ll do juss fine,” the scrawny man growled.

“Come back to that one later,” Charles grumbled, blushing up to his ears. Trying not to laugh, Erik brushed the man’s hair back from where it was tumbling into his face.

Toad leered down at them, but Erik couldn’t say that it felt necessarily ill-natured. More like a kid teasing his older brother about bringing a girl home.

“Dinnit I read somethin bout you two in tha paper?”

“You kin’t trust errything you read,” Vic growled, speaking for the first time since his initial verbal fuck-up.

“Right, course,” Toad nodded soberly. Teasing Erik and Charles apparently wasn’t worth instigating his cousin. Considering Toad maybe came up to the guy’s elbow, Erik saw the wisdom in this.

“How long have you been...er...interested in the Ash Creek house?” Charles asked, waving a hand vaguely at Toad’s expansive and eerie wall shrine.

“Errybody in this town got a hard-on fer tha place. About tha only thang puts Avalon on tha map at all, people bound ta get a mite proud a that. Pure idio-dacy,” Toad snorted.

“In what way?”

The man set a hand on the table, leaned forward until he was bearing straight down on Charles, causing the brunet to sit back in his chair anxiously.

“ _That house is evil,_ ” he hissed. “It ain’t _nothin_ to be proud of.”

Erik felt cold and hot at once, feverish, sick, excited. _Yes_. This was it precisely. This was the truth at the core of him, the truth no one else seemed to see.

Toad looked at him, his sharp, weasel eyes boring into him, seeing him, seeing to the center of him.

With a grin the man collapsed into a seat of his own, long gecko-like hands splaying wide. “I said about tha same thang ta Lana Lovegood, and she agreed--we talked ‘bout that a lot. Pen-pal like. Had ta give it up evenshally, tho. She was way too loony fer me.” Erik had never interacted with the Lovegood girl, but he shuddered to think of anyone who _Toad_ thought of as too loony. “Still got loads a her letters, tho. She wrote a metric fuck-ton a letters. “

“Letters?” Charles asked, sitting up. “Did you say letters?”

“Huyeah!” Toad guffawed. “I muss have boxes a tha stuff in my office. That girl could chat, chat yer damn hand off. Got damn tired of it in not too long--never were much of a writer. But she musta told me things bout that house, what happind thur, ta her sisser, what she dinnit tell nobody else--or that nobody ever bothered ta pay any attention ta, least.”

“You have,” Charles gasped, on the edge of passing out. “You have this correspondence? Here? It’s here?”

“You wanna look?”

Charles was too excited to speak but his innermost thrill seemed to be sparkling from every pore.

“Vic--go n show ‘im. I myself ain’t quite tall enough ta drag em down. Got em in an old suitcase up in tha office.”

Charles had already scrabbled halfway to the door when he heard who was going to be accompanying him. The brunet pressed up against the door jamb, struggling to catch Erik’s eye around this Sasquatch-like girth as Vic rose to his full height, fuzzy blonde hair brushing the ceiling.

“We’ll all go,” Erik argued, going to stand as well, but Toad’s words stopped him cold.

“Shit, I gotta say-- I jess kin’t get over it. You look just like yer grandaddy!”

Suspicion gnawed at him. He couldn’t be right. But he had to be right--he’d never looked anything like Pop Pop. It had been a bone of contention with the older man, how little his only grandson looked like him. Toad couldn’t be talking about Pop Pop. But he had to ask, had to be sure, just in case.

“Pop P--”

“Max,” Toad corrected. Erik sat back down, legs falling out from under him. That name...that name felt right...

He shook his mind clear. What the hell was he thinking? Of course the name was right--that was his grandfather’s name after all.

“Erik?” Charles squeaked as Vic ushered him out of the room.

Erik waved him off. He was fine.

“You knew my grandfather?”

Toad smiled at him across the table. The silence, something about the smile, seemed to underline the fact that they were very much alone now.

“You doan ‘member me, do ya?”

“Remember you?” Erik got that feeling again. The heat and the iciness all at once, the feverish sense of deja vu, the sense that he was experiencing again what he had never experienced before. His chest felt heavy, full.

Toad grinned, those shiny peg-like teeth glinting at him. Not shiny like white teeth in a toothpaste commercial, but like an oil slick.

“Hell, I ain’t surprised. You couldna been more’n seven er eight at tha time.”

Erik tried to gauge how old Toad was--surely the man was not that much older than him. The scrawny man seemed to sense his incredulity and followed up, “Course I was juss fifteen. Which was good--meant I went to juvie stead of tha big times. Lucky break thur.”

“What?”

Toad squinted at him carefully. “You _really_ doan ‘member?”

Erik’s silence seemed to answer for that, or at least the man didn’t wait for a response before planting his hands on the table and explaining.

“Firs I met yer grandaddy, I was werkin tha Shaw play. I was in charge a tha settins, all tha background shit. It was either that or get expelled, sorta community service type thang--people were unnerstandin back then. Kid brought a knife ta school they dinnit blow it outta pra-portion like they do these days.”

“You’ve got to be mistaken,” Erik interrupted. “That play’s for kids--why would my grandfather be there?”

“Doan innerupt,” Toad frowned at him. “An’ yer granddaddy weren’t there ta _see_ the play, he were there ta wreck it. He an I bonded o’er that--I was always up ta reck a li’l thing here ‘n there back then--sowin my wile oats, ya know?”

“What do you mean wreck the play? Why would my grandfather want to wreck the annual play?” Not that Erik harbored any warm feelings for the thing. His mother made sure he never had to go--it was such a waste of time he might as well stay home.

“It weren’t right, thass why, indoct--inocc--puttin shit in kids’ heads like that. He esplained it all ta me. We had ta put an end ta it. When this mean world casts its cold eye, you gotta strike it out. Ya don’t leave it standing ta be a beacon ta iss kind aroun’ tha worl’.”

_Strike it out. That was it exactly. When this mean world cast its cold eye, you had an obligation to strike it out._

He shook his head out. What was he hearing? What was this?

“You said you knew me. You said you’d seen me before.”

Toad looked at him astutely, staring down to the center of him again.

“When yer granddaddy came ta pick me up you were in the cab with him. You n I rode out tagether. You were pretty shy, so I showed you my baseball cards on the way out there. Member that?”

Erik had a passing memory, an old rattling truck, the smell of hot leather. Nothing else about the supposed reverie rang a bell.

“Out where?”

“To the Devil House.”

“The Gone Away House?” Erik relaxed, laughing. He should have known better than to believe anything this crackpot could possibly say. “You’re mistaken. I’ve never been there before.”

“The Lovegoods were juss comin back with tha baby. The whole town was roudy with it. A family in that hell hole. An now a baby. Yer grandaddy counnit let that happen. So we loaded up a gas can an’ went ta burn that place outta this world. Fight fire with fire, thass what yer grandaddy said.”

Erik went to interrupt him again, but Vic walked in, distracting him.

“Where’s Charles?”

“Scannin’ stuff,” the man grunted. Erik sat back impatiently. How long was Charles going to be?

“We’d doused the place pretty good with gasoline, but he wanned you ta light tha match. Do it tagether. Full circle. Dinnit even see the cops comin’.”

Erik’s felt hot under the dual gazes of Toad and Vic, heart beating fast.

He felt sweat gluing his shirt to his back, and, beyond that, he felt cracked leather pinching his bare legs, hot sunshine baking him but shivering despite it--he wasn’t supposed to be there, he wanted his mother, he wanted to go home. He turned into the blinding sunlight, his grandfather’s silhouette making him seem taller. The car door screamed as the man opened it.

“Come on, it’s time,” his grandfather said, and as he reached into the cab to pull him out Erik wrapped his arms around the steering wheel, holding onto his elbows, refusing to let go.

They’d struggled for a few seconds, and Erik had started to cry, could still feel the hot shame of it, the disgust with himself that washed over him when his grandfather let him loose and hissed, “Fine. I’ll do it myself.”

The cops had show up while his grandfather and the older boy were trying to light the gasoline. And although Erik had seen them coming, he’d given no warning, had felt a perverse sense of relief when they cuffed the old man. He could go home now, home to his mother.

“It’s comin back to ya now,” Toad murmured. Erik found himself sitting with his sweating palms pressed flat to the table, shivering despite feeling so overheated, breathing hard.

“I remember,” he murmured.

There was a loud thud that made him and Vic jump, though Toad gave no sign of hearing it. It jolted Erik from his flooding memories.

“I don’t understand. I don’t understand. This is crazy--fucking crazy,” he said. He didn’t have to believe this--how could he be remembering this? He’d never remembered any of this before. How could he have forgotten something this big? It didn’t make any sense.

Toad slammed his hand on the table, and Erik nearly fell out of his chair.

“Enough a that horse shit! You unnerstand juss fine--you juss don’t _wanna_ unnerstand! Now I get a lil bit a chicken shitness as a kid, all kids are chicken shit, but you ain’t a kid no more, so iss time ta man up!”

“What the hell are you talking about?” Erik growled.

Vic started pulling on the back of Toad’s shirt, apparently disparaging of this tough-guy approach.

There was another thud from nearby--was someone trying to get into the shop? But no--the front door was still open for business, there was no reason for them to break in. And Neither Toad nor Vic seemed concerned that someone was attempting to break down the back door, although Erik didn’t miss the anxious way Vic glanced at the hallway. Maybe someone _was_ trying to break in...Or...

“Now look, okay, _look_ ,” said Toad, pushing Vic’s hand off him.

But Erik stopped him. “Where’s Charles?”

“I tole you,” Vic grumbled, but he appeared to be talking to the table. Lies were unnecessary, though, as the mysterious thuds turned into distinct banging, overlaid with indeterminate shouting.

Erik lunged across the table and out of the room, followed closely by Vic and Toad, who was shouting.

“We need, you, Erik--iss gotta be you!”

The office door was rattling in its hinges, Charles shouting a stunning assortment of curse words.

“Charles!” he yelled. The handle turned in his hand but the door didn’t budge.

“Erik! Let me out of here!”

“We tried,” Toad hissed as Erik rattled the doorknob. “Your granddaddy and me tried--you saw what happened. The shit just would not fucking light. Devil’s house--course it don’t burn the ole fashin way. But he figured it out, before he died I mean. Yer granddaddy figured it out!”

Erik kept trying the door but it just would not budge, felt stuck within its very frame, wedged in tight. He slammed his shoulder against it, but only managed to hurt his shoulder.

“I know zackly what we need to do, Erik. I’ve got it all set up. All I need is you. Iss gotta be you. You know what yer granddaddy said--full circle. Iss gotta be you!”

“Who the fuck cares what that old loon said?!” Erik snarled at him, shoving the pipsqueak against the wall. “He was fucking insane and so are you! Now let him the fuck out of there!”

“You doan mean that,” Toad pouted, pinned three inches off the ground. “Yer juss upset, thass all.”

Snarling with anger, Erik shoved Toad away and pointed at Vic.

“You! Open that door!”

Vic obediently pushed on the door with seemingly little force and the thing sprang open immediately.

Charles jumped back, red with anger and very disheveled, probably from trying to break out of this room for so long. He looked between them all for a second, still either too shocked or furious to speak, then, still without a word, he grabbed Erik’s elbow and marched them out the front door.

“Oh man, sorry ‘bout that,” Toad laughed, very disingenuously. “That door sticks sometimes. Ole building, you know! You okay?”

“Shut it,” Charles snarled. “We’re leaving.”

“Vic!” Toad hissed and before Erik knew what was going on Vic had shoved Charles out the door and shut it on his furious yelp.

“Fer when ya change yer mind,” Toad said over Charles’ banging, handing Erik a card that he instinctively shoved in his pocket. “Now I doan know what you’ve tole Prince Harry so far, ain’t none a my business, a lil pillow talk. But lissen a me: doan tell him a goddamn thang if ya doan think ya can truss him ta back us up. Lord knows this shit is hard ‘nough without a hellfire guy like that tryna stop us.”

“Sorry bout that, Misser Zavier!” Toad laughed as he released Erik back into Charles’ custody. “You know how these boys in love get--Vic juss had one more goodbye he wanned some privacy fer. You unnerstand. Okay, bye now you two! Drive safe!”

“What were they talking to you about?!” Charles growled as Toad and Vic waved jauntily through the window, switching their open sign to closed.

“Nothing!” said Erik, racing to get in the car with Charles before he sped off without him. “They asked me about my grandfather, just shit about him--Toad knew him. They were crazy friends or something I guess.”

“That motherfucking rat fink bastard piece of shit asshole fucker,” the man hissed viciously, nearly ripping his seat belt loose as he buckled himself in. Erik rushed to keep up, but wasn’t able to buckle up or even close his door all the way before Charles peeled out, swerving angrily through the darkened (and luckily empty) streets.

They drove in silence, although Erik barely noticed it.

What the fuck had just happened? He couldn’t believe his memories, but what other explanation was there? How could he hallucinate an entire moment of his childhood?  It was so clear now, the heat of the day, the stench of gasoline and his grandfather’s dusty truck--how could he have just made all that up, all those details? It must have happened, right? But then, if it had really happened, how could he have just wiped it completely from his memory for all these years?

He’d been at that house not so many days ago; nothing about it had seemed the slightest bit familiar, he’d felt completely certain it was his first time being there. He’d _known_ he’d never been there before, and yet now he remembered so clearly _having_ been there before. He couldn’t explain it, and yet so much had happened so recently that was so beyond his depth. Should he just lump it in with everything else, shove it in a box in the back of his mind and do his best never to open it again? If it had happened, he’d managed to forget about it. He could forget about it again. He could forget it all.

Charles swerved and slammed on the brakes, stopping them on the side of an ill-lit road.

“What went on in there? What did they say to you? What _exactly_ did they say to you? No bullshit,” the man growled, white-knuckling the steering wheel.

“What?”

“I know what it feels like when someone’s lying to me, Erik. I lived with Raven for months while she was planning to ensconce with that tattooed dropout fuck, right under my nose. Do you think I could forget what that feels like? Do you think I could fail to recognize that feeling again?!”

“You think I’m not telling you something?” This was obvious, but Erik was too shocked to stop himself from saying obvious things. Charles was truly furious, and it was quite a spectacle.

“I _know_ you’re not telling me something,” Charles snarled. Erik was rendered mute, scrabbling desperately for words that wouldn’t come, wondering what exactly he should give away, how little he could get away with sharing. He had to give the man something, appease him somehow, despite how little he wanted to delve into it. He opened his mouth, but Charles beat him to it.

“Fuck,” the man sighed, knocking his head on the steering wheel and leaving it there. When he spoke again it was in a quiet, small-sounding voice. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry I--of course you don’t have to share everything with me. It’s not like I share everything with you. It’s not the same thing--I’m Raven’s brother, I’m nothing to you. You have no obligation to me. You don’t owe me anything, much less _everything_.”

“Hey,” Erik whispered, rubbing the back of Charles’ neck until the man turned his head to look at him. “You’re not nothing to me.”

Charles snorted a breathy laugh, eyes closing lightly. He reached up, holding Erik’s wrist, sliding his hand up to his elbow, his shoulder, his neck.

“You don’t have to tell me everything,” he said. “Just don’t lie to me. I’ve had all I can take of that, in a  lifetime. Just don’t lie to me.”

“Promise,” Erik smiled. “Now come on. Get us out of here. You’re just making it easier for Vic to stalk us.”


	54. Chapter 54

Erik didn’t bother to take his shoes off, didn’t bother to take anything off, collapsing face-first into bed fully clothed. His body, utterly exhausted, couldn’t manage anything else. But his brain, tired though it was, had too much to think about to follow suit.

 _What was that?_ He couldn’t process it, just kept running and re-running the past couple hours in his mind, over and over again. How could Toad be telling the truth? How could this scrawny twerp of a man have known his grandfather, and as intimately as he claimed? As for the rest of it...burning down the house and wanting Erik’s help with it! He couldn’t do something like that, no matter how shitty the house was.

But even at the thought his fingers itched with anticipation. Why not? When this mean world cast its cold eye, you had an obligation-- _no,_ he clamped down, squeezing his eyes shut. That wasn’t him. That wasn’t who he was. That was an infection, the infection of Toad, his grandfather, _that house_ and what it sparked in him.

Charles collapsed on top of him with a heavy sigh, weighing him down. It eased his body, squeezed the anxiety out of him, but couldn’t quell his thoughts.

Surely there were some situations where it was okay to fucking destroy a place completely, to rip it out of the fucking earth. If he had the opportunity to blow up Auschwitz, wouldn’t he? Some places just shouldn’t exist in this world, didn’t deserve to keep standing, a beacon to like-minded monsters...

Only when the vibrations stopped did he realize Charles had said something.

He yanked his thoughts away from their morbid topics, tried to focus on what the man had said, _asked_ because he was definitely waiting for a response of some kind.

“What?” he questioned, brain giving up prematurely.

Charles tensed terribly above him, and rolled away, murmuring a horrified, “Nothing.” Erik’s brain spun, panicked, into overdrive.

“No! Wait! What? What was it?”

“It’s okay, you changed your mind--there’s no law against it. Forget it.”

 _Shit._ What the fuck had the man asked? He’d been lying there, rubbing Erik’s hip under his shirt. _What would it be like?_ What would what be like? Was that really what Charles had asked?

He grabbed the man before he could slip away, trapping him in bed. “What would it be like? Is that what you asked?”

Charles refused to answer or meet his gaze, mouth pursed tight with embarrassment, face slowly turning increasingly deeper shades of pink. That must have been it.

“You mean...dating?” Erik asked, hardly believing it.

“I’m being an idiot,” Charles gushed immediately, covering his face. “I mean, I travel a lot. _A lot._ So it’s not like it would even work out anyway. I don’t know what I was thi--”

“That’s not a preclusion!” He struggled to pull the man’s hands from his face without exacerbating his black eye. “I mean a lot of people do long distance...And it’s not like we’d never _see_ each other. You don’t live in fucking Mumbai or something. And I’ve got lots of vacation wracked up. We could definitely make it work.”

Charles, staring resolutely at the ceiling, smiled slightly, and then stopped himself, biting his lip.

“What? What now?”

“Nothing. I...I just need to think about it, that’s all.”

“Oh for fuck’s sake,” he groaned. “What’s there to think about? It’s not a marriage proposal. You can duck out any time you decide it’s not for you.”

“It’s not me ducking out I’m afraid of. I know how it’s going to end, Erik. You make me forget--you keep making me forget, but deep down I know. I’ve seen it before, more than enough times. It’s always the same. You think it’s for you right now, but you’ll change your mind. I’ll mess it all up.”

“I’ll make you a deal, okay? If by some weird sort of gypsy curse you do manage to come up with something to so completely destroy my stalwart affection for you that I just absolutely have to be rid of you, I will never tell you. I’ll go with that whole ‘it’s not you, it’s me’, thing. I’ll fake my own death. I’ll move to India. You’ll never discover the truth. Promise.”

Charles eyed him from the corner of his good eye, smiling at him. His smile widened, until he laughed.

“Oh hell,” he huffed. “So what? Life only ends one way, but there’s still a joy in living it, isn’t there?”

Erik grinned, buoyed with success, so of course Charles had to shut that down.

“Let me think about it.”

Rolling his eyes, Erik kissed the man soundly. “By all means, take all the time you need. My ego only dwindles day by day in the meantime.”

Charles kissed him back, rolling him over to his back. “I’ve got something for that.”

“The spirit is willing...” Erik sighed, exhaustion pulling at his bones.

Charles smiled ruefully. “I supposed I _should_ let you get your rest. You didn’t get much sleep last night. Plus I’ve got _these_ to look through.” And the man pulled a sheaf of letters from his back pocket, huge curving handwriting standing out on the envelopes.

“You didn’t,” Erik gasped.

“Hey, I earned these letters! They locked me in a bloody office!”

“You naughty little thief,” Erik growled back, pulling the man’s hips closer.

“Do not start something you can’t finish,” Charles hummed before pulling away.

Erik deeply considered if he would be able to finish, discovered he would not be, and so didn’t stop the man from setting up his laptop and scanner. The room, he realized, was now a mess, Alex having dumped his work gear wherever was convenient in his rush to get home to that shrew of a mother. Electronics and paperwork were spread apparently in no particular order across the table and chairs. Charles grumbled adorably to himself as he tried to tidy it up.

“Do you have a toothbrush I can borrow?” he asked, toeing his shoes off. He didn’t bother asking for pajamas--even with the AC on it was too hot in here. Hopefully Charles wouldn’t count it as unmitigated temptation if he slept in the nude. Probably best to at least keep his underwear on, he guessed, for sanity’s sake.

“What?” the man looked over, seemingly remembering that he was still there.

“Toothbrush?”

“Oh, we’re not staying here! I’ve just got Skype Darwin and the team soon and then it’s back to your place.”

“My place? Why?”

He wasn’t sure he wanted to go back to his place yet. He wasn’t sure the stench of burnt plastic had had enough time to dissipate...Not to mention the fact that he was bound to fall asleep on the drive back and crash into a tree and then he’d never get to date Charles.

“I don’t much trust Raven’s newly-forged respect for privacy, for one. And for two, I’ve got to get that Lovegood file.”

Erik cringed, and this was unfortunately not lost on Charles.

“What? What is it?”

“I...sort of had to give that back?”

Charles did not understand him, because he was incapable of understanding madness of this magnitude. “Give what back?”

“The file.”

“The file?” Charles’s perplexed expression soon gave way to one of pure panic. “ _The Lovegood file?! You gave away the Lovegood file?!_ ”

“Well I sort of stole it in the first place! So...so I had to give it back!”

Charles put his head between his knees and took deep breaths, rocking back and forth.

When he recovered he was red in the face but relatively calm.

“That’s okay. This is okay. We’ll just use the copies. That’s fine. I don’t need originals. Copies are fine.”

Erik slowly slid away across the bed until he was out of striking distance, but it did him little good as the smaller man pounced to grip his collar.

“ _YOU DIDN’T MAKE COPIES?! YOU GAVE AWAY THE FILE AND DIDN’T MAKE COPIES?!_ ”

“I’m sorry!” Erik wailed, tugging the man’s hands from his throat. “I made notes! Mark was going to get in trouble! I had to give it back!”

“Mark!” Charles scoffed, dropping him with disgust. Erik grabbed him again before he could go kick down his friend’s door and demand the file back.

“I’m sorry, okay? I’m sorry. It’s an open case, it’s not open to public disclosure--it’s not like you could have published any of it anyway!”

Charles writhed against him, seemingly fighting the urge to ignore him and go track the file down regardless, lawsuits be damned. It looked very similar to an exorcism, with the man keening and groaning mindlessly.

“Come on, sweetness, deep breaths.”

Charles gained enough control to frown up at him, just on the edge of pouting.

“Did you just call me ‘sweetness’?”

“Forgive me for the file thing or I’ll do it again, I swear to god.”

Charles couldn’t help but laugh, shifting under him.

“For someone who’s too tired for sex, you sure are asking for it.”

Erik rolled off of him, hands up in defeat.

“I wonder if I have time for a cold shower before Skyping...”

On cue, Charles’ laptop started chiming.

“Complete silence,” Charles demanded before getting in front of the screen, positioning it carefully to curtail its view of the room.

Erik made sure to be completely silent; he’d instigated the man enough as it was. They might never recover if Erik brought the wrath of his team (aka Darwin) down on him on top of that file debacle. He wouldn’t be able to live himself if he dashed all his hopes at the last.

So he rubbed toothpaste over his teeth and used a water bottle nearby to rinse. Charles did everything he could not to glare daggers at him as he reached into his satchel to withdraw his prescription as slowly and quietly as possible from its paper bag. Much as he shouldn’t, Erik found he kind of liked it. In order for Charles to keep up his charade he had to pretend like Erik was not there, which meant he could not look at him even slightly.

He made sure to stand directly behind the laptop as he stripped down to his underwear, smiling as Charles went through all the shades of pink.

“No, no, it just got really hot in here all of a sudden! Crazy heat wave over here.”

Erik cranked the AC up even higher, making Charles immediately shiver, belying his words. In lieu of glaring at him, Charles could only purse his lips in frustration. He did manage to chuck a pen at him out of view of the camera, catching him right across a shin and making him wince and hop dramatically. It was a clear struggle for Charles not to laugh, and Erik counted his job as well done, downing his pills and climbing into bed. He might be tired enough to fall asleep on his own, but he wasn’t risking it with those damned nightmares whipping him up all night--tonight he was going to _sleep._

Only afterwards did he realized he’d taken two out of habit--two Tylenol, two Dayquil--he was just used to taking two. Oh well. It was probably fine.

He settled down, punching his overstuffed pillows into place (which Charles covered with a boisterous cough) and stole Charles’ book off his bedside table to fall asleep to. Charles’ voice was pleasant but had little meaning as he discussed fluctuations and aperture settings and more numbers than a math teacher. They also discussed the Lovegood letters, a watered-down version of Charles’ evening (Erik noticed he was scrubbed completely from the retelling; Charles did not state but heavily implied that Alex had been the one accompanying him). It was pleasant background noise, lilting, lulling.

He realized the words on the page were swimming before him and pushed the book away, rolling onto his back. The room swam, but he struggled to keep his eyes open, amazed. What was happening? Was this normal? The lights dimmed, shuddered--wavering, unsure. Like flames. His heartbeat picked up, trembling in his chest, hands gone hot, clammy. He looked to Charles, still sitting there, flames glinting darkly in his half-curls--he willed the man to look at him, help him, but Charles was speaking hyperactively, hands waving in the air, distracted.

He felt sleep at the edge of him, knew he should close his eyes and accept it but couldn’t. This sleep was disconcerting, not normal. It was as if sleep were stalking him, slinking towards him in the shadows, he could feel its breath suddenly on the back of his neck. But, horrified, he realized there was nothing he could do to stop it. He was paralyzed with sleep. It felt as if he were sinking deeper and deeper in the bed, the edges scaffolding up around him like the walls of a well. He looked to Charles, watched him disappear beyond the heights of the wall, tried to call out to him but his voice strangled in his throat.

_You’re dreaming. This isn’t happening._

He squeezed his eyes shut and reopened them, but it only made it worse.

In a smoky corner he could make out the metal door, rusty and diseased. And he screamed silently, internally, as it opened and a man walked in.

Every muscle coiled, not in flight, for once, but in _rage_. He pulled at his restraints with murderous ire, wanting nothing more than to be able to jump up and strangle the man to death as he came and sat on the edge of Erik’s bed.

“Max,” the man chuckled, patting his leg through the covers. Erik couldn’t speak, had to choke on his rage, straining for the strength to murder.

Shaw’s glasses glinted in the room lights as he shifted closer, close enough to stroke Erik’s hair, his hand burning hot.

“I knew you’d come back to me. I knew you couldn’t stay away. There’s only one last impediment; you remember? Listen.”

Erik didn’t have any choice but to listen. In the silence with no ability to scream, there was only the ability to listen.

“Max,” someone whispered. He realized it was his father, and turned to look.

In the floor beside the bed were three wells. His father’s voice emanated from the middle one, small and pained-sounding.

“Max, help me.”

“Papa!” he tried to cry, but nothing came out. It felt as if his throat would burst from so many unscreamed words.

“Shh shh shh,” Shaw sighed, pushing his hair back over his brow. “They’re the last thing standing in our way. Once they’re gone you can have the life you were meant to have. I’m here to help you, Max. Over this last hurdle. It’s hard, but sentimentality is for children. I’m offering you adulthood. It’s time to become the man of your destiny. There is only the weak and the strong, and fate doesn’t reward the weak.”

_They?_

A voice was coming from the third well, soft but growing stronger, until he could begin to make it out.

“Erik,” his mother said. “Erik, can you hear me? Erik, don’t listen to him. I know he means well, I know what he’s saying sounds right, but it’s not. _He’s_ not, Erik. You need to stay away. You need to keep away, darling. Stop this. Can you hear me?”

“Can you hear me?” Shaw growled, gripping the back of his neck. “It’s time.”

Shaw slipped something into his hand, and Erik was able to look down enough to see it was a match.

“We’ll do it together,” Shaw smiled, white teeth glinting. The match sparked to life, flame dancing in his grip, and Shaw grabbed his hand, dragging it towards his family, trapped, unable to escape the pyre.

_No no no!_

“To us,” Shaw sighed, and let it fall.

With a cry that choked and died in his throat Erik sat bolt upright in bed, shaking hard, body on fire.

It was dark, pitch black, lights out, Charles beside him in bed, fast asleep. He lunged for the AC, wanting to bask in it or drown his head in a bucket of ice water. But his arm tingled with fire. Instead of turning the AC up as high as it could go he ended up turning it off, choking on the unmitigated heat. He gasped for breath, his chest spasming--choking on the heat, gagging. He struggled to suck in breath, gripping the AC control but unable to turn it on. The warmth emanated to all his limbs, to his brain, till he was used to the heat, till he could breathe again, though shakily.

“What are you doing?” Charles asked groggily from the dark behind him.

“Just turning off the AC,” he said, before he’d thought of what to say. He was surprised by how steady it sounded, how _un-his_ it seemed.

“Thank bloody god. I was turning into an ice lolly. Get back in bed, my little furnace.”

Erik grit his teeth but did so. He couldn’t sleep. Not after that. He’d given sleep a shot, but that hadn’t panned out. He would never sleep again.

Charles, padded down in his sweatshirt and pajama pants, wound around him tightly, settling in, face pressed between the bed and Erik’s bicep.

“You really are a furnace,” Charles mumbled, fumbling to stroke his side. He stopped in another moment, asleep once more. Erik allowed him another few minutes, to make sure he was well and truly under before extricating himself.

He didn’t dare turn on a lamp, opened Charles’ laptop instead for illumination. It booted up immediately, going straight to the home screen, a picture of the team standing outside a Discovery Channel production trailer, all embracing and smiling. Charles was in the center, one arm around Darwin and one around Hank, all smiles. He glanced back, Charles’ face slack in the light from the laptop.

Quietly he toggled the cursor to the internet, pulling up a bookmark for email. He scanned through, looking for clues. Where was the man at? What had he discovered?

Not much it seemed.

_Nothing much on Frost interview. Tape v. garbled/muffled. Have it on good authority she heard baby. Lovegood baby? Investigating master bathroom further. Will update._

Erik was happy to hear he was now listed as a good authority, but moved on with a soft growl of frustration. Surely there had to be something here...

In recent items there was a folder entitled _Ash Creek House -- Avalon_ which he opened excitedly.

_Transcripts_

_Temperature_

_Interviews_

He clicked on this last one, perusing a selection of clips.

_Banner, Bruce_

_Elfman, David_

_Goldwyn, Sarah and Lina_

Heart in his throat, Erik opened it. Sarah. He knew Sarah. Her mother worked at the Jewish bakery. And Sarah had just had a baby.

He checked on Charles again, still fast asleep. He used his phone as a flashlight and found a pair of headphones in Charles’ work bag and plugged them in before pressing play.

Charles was sitting on the couch in the living room at the house, watching something ahead of him, so avidly that it could only be work. There were no black eyes to be seen, the man still looking fresh-faced and unmolested.

“Okay? How does it look? How’s the lighting?”

“Ummm...” That must be Alex. Charles’ eyes tracked to the left and the lighting dimmed and then brightened again. Alex approached from the side of the camera with a hand-held machine and stood beside Charles, facing the white ball on the machine towards the light. Charles smiled at the boy from the corner of his mouth.

“You’re getting pretty good with the light meter.”

Alex looked up from the machine to blush up to his ears.

“Aw shucks,” the kid mumbled.

They turned in unison, hearing something that the camera didn’t pick up.

“That must be our first takers!” Charles cheered, going to the door. Alex grabbed the camera, taking a second to get it off the tripod. Erik watched, queasy, as the view spun and jostled, hiccuped on Alex’s bouncing steps, past the basement door and out onto the front porch. Charles stopped waving at the car that had pulled up and turned to look at Alex incredulously.

“What are you doing?”

“Hand held! It’s all the rage these days -- found footage!”

“In horror movies, maybe,” said Charles with a roll of the eyes. “You’re going to have to redo all that hard work with the lighting, now that you’ve moved the camera!”

“Oh, yeah...”

“Hi there!” a woman’s voice rang out, and Alex moved the camera to show Sarah waving as she walked daintily up to the house, baby in her arms.

Sarah had been a senior in high school when Erik was a sophomore and had dated a guy on his soccer team. He knew way too much about her sexual peccadillos, or at least those advertised by Johnny. They’d broken up right after prom and Sarah married Ben Goldwyn a couple years later, dropped out of college, and devoted herself to being a doting wife and mother. Erik would make fun of her, but his mother had done something very similar, and Sarah seemed genuinely happy with her decision, so there was nothing to mock.

She had dressed her best for her time on screen, hair in perfect beauty-pageant curls, Macy’s floral dress matched with manageable heels, baby and diaper bag appearing like misplaced props in an I-Can’t-Believe-It’s-Not-Butter commercial.

“Wowie, look at this place!” she trilled, and Erik realized she was faking some sort of newscaster accent or something. “Are you filming?”

“Um, yes,” Charles coughed. “Just testing the camera, nothing official. We’ve got an interview space set up in the living room.”

“Should I bring Linny’s bouncer or do you want me to hold her during the interview?”

“Oh, the bouncer will probably be easier on you. This could take a while. Here, I’ll get it for you. No, it’s okay, Alex, I’ve got it.”

Alex had started to follow Charles down the stairs to the car, but stopped.

“It’s in the trunk. You’re such a dear!” Sarah giggled, giving Charles her keys as they passed.

“Alex, don’t just stand there--take the lady’s bag!”

“You two spoil me!”

Alex took her bag and dropped in onto the patio, focused more on his camera work than Mrs. Goldwyn’s belongings.

“He’s a tall drink of water,” Sarah said through her smiling teeth, patting her curls. He wasn’t sure why she was still faking her accent since Alex would know she didn’t talk like this. Maybe it was tough switching back and forth.

“He’s gay,” Alex countered.

“You can’t believe everything you read in the papers,” said Sarah, scowling from the corner of her eyes.

“I dinnit read anythin in some paper--I’m his friend. He’s head over heels for Lensherr.” Erik blushed in the darkness, skin tingling pleasurably. Was Alex right? Had Charles actually said that? No, Charles couldn’t even say that to himself, much less to this teenager, a coworker of sorts. But still, Alex must be basing this on something, and that was all Erik needed in order to be mindlessly pleased.

“We’ll see.”

“Aren’t you married?”

“He’s not for me! He’s for my sister!” Erik winced on Charles’ behalf. Talk about dodging a bullet.

“I seen yer sister. She ain’t turnin’ anybody straight, trust me.”

“There we go!” Charles’ voice called. “Alex--don’t leave the poor lady waiting on her feet! Let her inside!”

“Age before beauty,” Alex said, motioning Sarah towards the door.

It shut in her face, making her gasp.

“Very funny,” she growled at Alex and, shifting the baby to the other arm, reached for the doorknob.

“Wait!” Alex shouted, but Sarah was already grabbing it.

She shrieked and let it loose, waking the baby and starting it wailing as well.

“What?! What happened?” Charles shouted. He showed up in a second having abandoned the baby bouncer.

“Was it hot?” Alex questioned.

“It’s freezin’, ya prick!” Sarah screamed at him.

“Alex, look!”

The boy shoved the hysterical Sarah away and hunkered down by the door knob with Charles, camera zoomed in as close as possible.

“Look, look,” Charles whispered. His finger came into view, the short, bitten fingernail, ran along the face plate of the doorknob. It scraped away a layer of frost that quickly replaced itself, the frozen tendrils whiting over the brass plate.

There was the sound of a car door slamming and Alex whirled with the camera around as Sarah threw her diaper bag in the car, leaving the bouncer in the yard where Charles had left it.

“I’m outta here!” she wailed to herself. “Ain’t no TV show werth all that! You crazy bastards! I knew I shouldna come out here! Oh sweet gawd help me!”

She backed out of the driveway, spitting up dirt and gravel, spinning her tires.

“Sarah, wait!” Charles called after her, but she was already gone. He stood panting, leaning over the porch bannister. “The fuck was that?”

“Cold manifestation,” Alex panted back, zooming in on the frost again. It was melting now, dripping down the door.

“But why?”

Erik paused the video, heart racing.

 _Cold manifestations. And hot._ What had Charles said? First there had been cold, then the hot got stronger and stronger, overpowered the cold, suppressed it. But not now. Somehow it had gathered the necessary strength to lash out, to fight back against the heat. But why? Because of Sarah? The baby?

If the thing was so affected by them as to attack them, it could have accomplished that much better once they were _in_ the house. Like Kitty--it hadn’t attacked Kitty when she could escape, it had waited until she was deep inside the belly of the beast. But that was the _hot_ signature, the attacker, the violent stalker, leading its prey deeper and deeper before pouncing--the library, the stairwell.

The cold manifestation hadn’t done that, hadn’t waited patiently in the wings until Sarah and the baby were inside and settled and vulnerable. It had...

“It stopped her,” he whispered to himself. “It stopped them from going inside.”

Why?

 _You need to stay away._ He thought of his mother’s voice in his dream, coming to him as if from miles away. _You need to keep away, darling. Stop this._

_Stop this..._

Heart racing, he shut Charles’ laptop. What was he doing? What the hell did he think he was doing? Just because he had a bad dream, he thought that gave him a right to snoop through Charles’ things? That wasn’t him. He didn’t do things like that. What the hell would Charles say if he woke up and caught him like this? As if the man didn’t have enough trust issues.

So he could no longer risk going to sleep, risk entering that dream realm where anything might happen to him. That didn’t mean he had to snoop through Charles’ things. He grabbed his phone and Charles’ headphones and climbed into bed, struggling not to jostle the man. Luckily Charles seemed exhausted enough to be hard to wake. He’d had a long day, after all, full of romantic suspicions and fist fights and getting locked in offices. There was a heavy sigh, Charles wiggled out of his sweatshirt, and then there was nothing but puffy breaths and pincer limbs.

For someone who’d been so unsure of cuddling, Charles was certainly showing an aptitude for it. Erik fixed his pillows to sit up slightly in bed and maneuvered the man’s arms around his waist so they weren’t crushing his ribs. He watched Band of Brothers on his phone, a favorite of his with lots of explosions so he could be sure not to fall asleep. He didn’t know what he was going to do tomorrow night, but decided that that was tomorrow night’s problem. For now he was doing what he had to do to protect himself. He refused to have another dream like that again.

He focused on his phone, on Charles’ breath on him, on the feel of the man’s hair under his fingertips and struggled to ignore the shadows in the room, what lurked there and in the corners of his mind.

 

 


	55. Chapter 55

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a short one, but I'm hoping the next won't take so long! Wish me luck (those of you not thoroughly fed up with me by now).

Erik was three episodes in when the alarm went off. Charles’ arm struck out seemingly of its own accord and in complete autonomy from the rest of his body, slapping the chirping phone into silence. The rest of him didn’t move, still cuddled up at Erik’s side, face buried in his throat. As subtly as possible, Erik turned off his phone and unplugged, pushing the lot of it behind his pillow before Charles woke up completely. He needn’t have been so stealthy, as it turned out.

“Shower,” Charles mumbled, lips dragging across his throat erotically. And, seemingly without waking, the man struggled out of bed and stumbled to the bathroom. He was pretty sure the man’s didn’t even open his eyes. He really had a way of making subterfuge feel wasted.  

Erik rolled out of bed as well, quickly putting Charles’ headphones back where’d he’d gotten them. He went to stretch, but winced instead. His chest hurt. Well, didn’t  _ hurt.  _ Wasn’t exactly  _ pain _ , more like slight pressure. Like someone had tied pieces of string to his ribs and was pulling on them gently. For some reason it felt like WebMD would have nothing helpful to say about that.

Frowning, he went to the stronger vanity lights over the bathroom sink to inspect himself. The bruises were still spreading. They went across his ribs now, speckling his diaphragm, reaching up to his collarbones. And he wasn’t sure if it was the stark lighting or what, but he could swear his veins seemed...It felt weird to say  _ darker _ , but he wasn’t sure how else to describe it. He swore he could make out the lines in certain places,  like from the bruises on his bicep down to the hollow of his elbow. He held his arm up, twisting so he could view the underside in the mirror and sure enough the artery in his arm showed up stark against the pale underside. He pushed up closer, counter digging at his hip. 

In the mirror the dark veins looked like ivy climbing the walls of a dilapidated house. The ivy climbed up from the bruises on his chest, a dark streak of jugular scrabbling up for his face, grabbing a foothold on him, coming for him. 

_ This is not good,  _ he realized suddenly.  

He needed a turtleneck, that’s what he needed. He was pretty sure he had one at home, in a box somewhere, a leftover from his moody college days smoking clove cigarettes over Sylvia Plath. Where had he put that blue jacket with the permanently popped collar? Would it be too hot for that? He had to get out of here, cover this shit up before Charles saw him. Possibly invest in some concealer for whatever the turtleneck didn’t catch, especially if this kept spreading. That would never work, though--Charles was bound to muss it up, hands-on as he was. He wasn’t sure what to do about that, couldn’t think that far into the future. For now he just had to get home and change before Charles saw him like this  _ and started asking questions _ . 

Where the fuck had he put his fucking keys? Should he leave a note? Text? Charles would kill him if he ducked out without a word, but he couldn’t risk saying anything...could he? Maybe just duck his head in real quick...

The brunet had left the door open slightly, and Erik pushed it the rest of the way anxiously. The steam poured out, and all the heat--Charles was sure to feel the draft so Erik jumped into the dense, humid fog and settled the door mostly closed behind him. In the moment before he could get his voice working he was silenced prematurely. 

“ _ Baby I don’t want you, but I neeeeed you.”  _ Charles was singing to himself, softly and slightly off-key. Erik couldn’t help but smile, and with his smile all his anxiety, his paranoid dread, seemed to melt away. So he was bruised. Charles knew he was bruised. He didn’t have anything to hide. So Charles asked questions, Charles was always asking questions. Being with Charles would mean dealing with a lot of questions, most likely. If he still wanted to be with Charles then he’d have to learn to live with the questions. “ _ Don’t wanna kiss you, but I neeeed to.” _

Sidling up to the side of the bath he eased the shower curtain aside. 

Charles’ voice had lowered to a bare sing-song mumble as he stood in the warm spray, rubbing his good eye.  _ “You’ve really got a hold on me.” _

He jumped slightly when Erik said, “What a lovely singing voice.”

“Liar,” Charles laughed, grimacing at him. “You startled me.”

“Got soap in your eyes?”

“Shampoo. You going to help get it out?”

Erik stripped down and stepped inside, shivering under the luke-warm water. 

“That’s not going to do at all,” he intoned, reaching around the man, nibbling on him as he turned the heat up.

“Ouch--no, no--that’s too hot,” the brunet whined sleepily.

“Oh, come on. It’s barely warm!”

Charles switched him places, getting out of the spray, rubbing the last of the shampoo from his eyes, careful of the bruised one. 

“Bruises look worse,” he said, brushing Erik’s collarbone, kissing his throat. 

“Probably the lighting.” The hot water felt wonderful, and felt even better as he slotted the man against him, hip to hip, hands exploring Charles’ slick waist. “Yours looks just as bad.”

The man gave a humming sort of reply and wrapped his arms around him. Which Erik enjoyed, until he realized Charles was reaching for the faucet. 

“Hey, quit that!” he growled, walking the man away from it and holding him there as he reached back to turn it back up. 

“It’s too hot! Oi, don’t do that, I didn’t even touch it!”

Which was obviously a lie because the water was clearly colder.

“You’re insane! You’ll burn yourself!”

“It’s just right! Come here,” Erik cajoled, pulling the man closer. But Charles resisted, and was just slippery enough to escape him. 

“No, thank you. I’ve got enough to do today with throwing in a visit to the burn unit.”

“So dramatic,” Erik sighed, turning the water off and joining Charles in drying off. He was rewarded with Charles taking a towel to him, pausing to kiss him. It was only then that he realized how leisurely, how comfortably possessive the kisses felt--nothing like the fevered, thoughtless passion Charles usually prefered

Shock led him to pull back, mouth falling open in a question he hadn’t figured out how to ask. 

_ Did this mean...Was Charles ready to... _

Charles seemed to anticipate what was at the tip of his tongue; his eyes went wide, cheeks darkened. 

The knock at the door came as a godsend to the brunet, Erik was pretty sure. He grabbed a robe and just about sprinted to answer it. 

Rubbing his face, Erik struggled not to yell something unnecessarily mean at him. Charles had to go at his own pace. There was nothing to be gained by grabbing him and shaking him until his teeth rattled or until he came to his senses (he was pretty sure which would come first). 

“Alex, so good of you to come so early! Come in, come in!”

Erik rolled his eyes. The man didn’t need a chaperone--Erik was capable of being on relatively decent behavior without that. He slung his towel very loosely around his hips and sauntered from the bathroom. 

It took Alex a second to glance up, enraptured as he was by his idol, but when he did he blushed beyond his hairline and stuttered for a full minute. 

“Oh, sorry, Alex. Didn’t hear you come in,” he yawned, stretching obscenely. Charles glared at him, but Alex simply choked on his own spit and ran away, squeaking something about meeting them downstairs when they were ready to go. 

“That was a rotten trick,” Charles snarled, scowling with that black eye and the oversized robe that made him look like an ornery child. 

“What?” Erik asked as innocently as possible, turning his back on Charles’ vociferous lecture. 

Which petered off into silence. Before Erik could turn to investigate the man’s sudden ineloquence he was being grabbed and manhandled. And not in a fun way.

“What the hell are you doing?” Erik yowled as the man shoved him into a neck-aching bend.

But Charles’ only response was to mutter “What the hell what the hell,” as he rubbed a hole in Erik’s back.

Wincing, he squirmed and tried to pull away from the onslaught. But Charles didn’t allow himself to be bucked, gripping Erik by the scruff of the neck and marching him to the vanity lighting. 

“Is this foreplay?” Erik growled. “Because I am only 75 percent into this.”

“My god!” Charles hissed, for all intents and purposes completely deaf. “I’m such an idiot!” He pushed away, leaping to rip through his bags, throwing items willy-nilly. Frowning, Erik turned to look at his back in the mirror. The bruising was just as prevalent back here as it was on his chest, the hodge-podge leopard spots darkening his ribs and spine and shoulder blades. But they were nothing to the pitch-black scorch mark at the center of his back.

And he, like Charles, was remembering the burn, the sense of burning, the touch on his back in the dark that ignited him and set him painfully ablaze. 

“Now Erik, I’ve got to. You understand I’ve  _ got to, _ ” Charles panted, racing up with his camera at the ready. Erik backed up against the closet until his shoulders were pressed damply to the door, the urge to fight swelling up hot and painful in his chest, pressing against his breastbone.

He wrestled with the surge, fighting it back down again, the effort of it making him nauseous. 

_ Stop this. He had to stop this. _

He tried, closing his eyes a minute to further corall himself, until he was capable of rational thought. It was just a photo. Charles already had one, what was wrong with a matching set? It’d be much more annoying to say no and hear Charles bitch about it the rest of the day. This was the path of least resistance, but that didn’t make it the wrong choice. Why should he care? It wasn’t risque: even if Charles shared it, it wouldn’t be any worse than the picture he’d already taken of him at the lake. Or that embarrassing picture from the front porch. Jeeze, he still had to get Charles to shred that one, so at least it didn’t spread any further than it had already.

“Okay,” he said, finally, an exhaling sigh. “Okay, be quick.”

Charles stared at him, obviously teeming with arguments, now suddenly at a loss.

“What?”

“Hurry up before I change my mind,” Erik huffed. He turned his back to the man, crossing his arms over his chest to keep from shaking. He couldn’t even bare to keep watch in the mirror, turning his face away and listening instead to Charles struggling to get the camera on the right settings, the muttered cursing, finally the incessant clicking, which seemed to  _ snick  _ deeper and deeper into Erik’s skull. 

It stuttered to a stop, and there was a clatter Erik only just had time to jump at before he saw with shock it was Charles setting the camera down shakily, followed immediately, surprisingly, by the man wrapping his arms around his waist.

They swayed together, Erik too surprised to speak.

“I’m sorry,” the man murmured into his back. 

“Sorry? Why?”

“Just...all of this. Dragging you into all of this. And...”

Charles didn’t seem to be able to find the words, so Erik let him off the hook, rubbing his arms where they encircled him. “Hey, it’s okay.”

Turning, he took the other man, gripping him tightly. Charles nestled in there, cheed fitting perfectly against the curve of Erik’s throat. 

“I want you to stay with me.” It was so faint Erik wasn’t sure he’d heard him, at least not correctly. But when he pulled back Charles was looking up at him with a level of terror that made him realize he’d heard him exactly correctly. Which Charles immediately tried to negate. “Just today, I mean! Just...if you can...if Emma would let you.”

His heart thrilled, beaming through every facet of him. But it didn’t last long, as dread seeped in, chilling and dimming him.

“I can’t,” he realized aloud. He regretted it as soon as he’d said it, just for the stricken look on Charles’ face. “I’m sorry! I just... I can’t go back there, Charles. I can’t go back to that house.”

Charles laughed out loud, collapsing against him with mirth. 

“Oh, that’s funny now? You’re real polite!” 

“I’m sorry! I’m sorry!” Charles laughed, shaking him by the waist. “I only laugh because--I’m not going to the house today. We finished up interviews yesterday.”

“You’re not going to the house?”

“No.”

“So where are you going?”

“The library.”

“The library!” Erik’s beam reinstated itself. “Now that I can handle.”


	56. Chapter 56

Erik got his things ready to go, though slower than Charles liked, going at least half the man’s frenetic pace. His limbs felt heavy, somnambulic. He realized he hadn’t gotten a full night’s sleep since Charles got here. Now that the sleeping pills were a bust, he wasn’t sure what to do about that. As he got dressed in yesterday’s clothes, hair damp but unwashed, he couldn’t help but feel he made an especially grotty tableau this morning. He’d ask Charles to let him stop by his house, get fresh clothes, wash up, but judging by the man’s muttered breaths of “so fecking late--what is wrong with me?” he thought his pleas would go on fairly deaf ears.

So he was surprised mid-buttoning of his shirt by Charles’ tranquil sigh.

“I hate seeing you get dressed.”

Looking up from his ministrations he saw the brunet did indeed look pretty doleful, bag slung over his shoulder, dressed again in his heavy tweeds, petulant frown on his bruised face.

Grinning, Erik began unbuttoning his shirt again.

Stifling a rogue smile, Charles clapped a hand over his eyes and felt his way to the door. He just managed to get it open before Erik grabbed him, pulling him up off the ground in order to better carry back into the room, preferably all the way to the bed. Rather than a proliferation of abuse, this forced a yelp of laughter from the man, twisting and wriggling in his grip.

Which perhaps explained Raven’s shocked stare and red face on their door step, hand poised to knock.

Charles shoved him away, stumbling slightly when he landed hard on his heels. “Raven! What...what are you doing here?”

It took the blonde woman a few starts to get her mouth working. Erik could visibly see her get a handle on herself, starting with a violent desire to scream at them, amending down to a lecture, and finally choking back distaste to plaster on a painful-looking smile. Which slipped immediately when she focused a bit more.

“ _What happened to your fucking eye?!_ ”

Charles stepped back from her grabbing hands, knocking Erik into the open door, banging it loudly against the wall.

“I’m fine!” Charles groused. “Just a little accident.”

“ _Accident_?!” she shrieked. She glared at Erik, as if she were about to accuse him of something. This gave him the opportunity to scowl at her, attempting to communicate purely by glaring that she needed to calm the fuck down if she planned on her and her brother remaining on speaking terms for the remainder of the trip.

Slowly, huffing and puffing, she corralled herself again, smile looking even more sickly and half-hearted than before. “Okay...well...accidents do happen! Just checking in for the morning, wanted to see what we were up to today. Azazel and I are primed and ready to serve, as ever.”

“Oh, right,” Charles said, visibly deflating. He’d obviously hoped her hands-off approach from yesterday would carry over into today. “Well we’ve got an appointment to get to just now...” Erik obediently grabbed his satchel and closed the door behind him, giving things a distinctive air of finality.

“Excellent!” Raven said, clapping her hands like a cheerleader confusingly hired to work a funeral. “Where are we going?”

Charles cringed, and this unfortunately wasn’t lost on the woman, her face darkening a shade.

“What?”

“Nothing. It’s just...I’m only meeting with the historical society, you know? It doesn’t exactly take five people.”

“But it takes three?”

Erik tried to warn her off, shaking his head demonstratively behind Charles’ back. If she lost her cool and freaked out on him things would undoubtedly implode, and Erik was pretty sure he could not deal with the aftermath on this little sleep.

“Raven, if you really want to help, there are plenty of things here to help with. Letters to transcribe for Darwin, video editing--”

“Intern stuff! Have Alex do that, and I can come with you!”

Making sure Charles wasn’t looking, Erik made a threatening gesture, pretending to slit his own throat.

“I’ve told you what I need, Raven. I really don’t have time to argue with you. Erik.”

“Um, I’ll be right there. I...forgot something in the room. One sec.”

Frowning warily between the two of them, Charles passed him the room key with a warning “Be quick,” and escaped.

“What the fuck?!” Raven hissed at him almost immediately, rage boiling over, face turning a distinctive shade of puce. “You said to leave him be! I did that! I held up my end of the bargain--he’s still just as stubborn as ever! He still isn’t letting me in! Why did I even listen to you and Azazel? Bunch of fucking amateurs. At least when I yell at him he’s forced to face me, he can’t slink away like this!”

“Yeah that went so well for you last time! By all means, just keep doing that, the results are fascinating! Be real. You didn’t create this problem in one day, you aren’t going to fix it in one day.”

“Oh why do I listen to you? What do you know?”

“What the hell do you have to lose?” he snarled back. “You’ve tried it your way. You’ve been trying it for years. Has it worked? Are you two a happier, more functional family unit? Why not try something new? And I mean _really_ try it, sweetheart, not just be on your best behaviour for all of twenty-four hours and then show up, hands out, ready to collect your fucking miracle.”

She glared viciously, arms across her chest.

“You’re an asshole, you know that?”

“Back at you. See you around.”

“Not so fast,” she sighed, stopping him in his tracks with her hand out expectantly. He started at her, uncomprehending. “Room key! It appears I’ve got some letters to transcribe.”

He let her in, grabbing his jacket from the back of the chair and showing her the letters to transcribe. She eyed the unmade bed critically, but there was nothing sordid to see there; they’d been too exhausted last night to strew the place with used condoms or anything.

“Good luck with boy wonder today,” she sighed. Putting on his jacket he felt Toad’s card still in his pocket from yesterday, and only just remembered to answer her, thought it was with nothing more than a distracted grunt. Struggling not to look back, he took a clipped pace down the stairs to join Charles and Alex in anxious vigilance in the parking lot.

“Okay?” Charles questioned, stopping mid-gnaw of a fingernail.

“Okay,” he agreed.

“Okay, lezgo then!” Alex exclaimed impatiently, shoving them towards their cars. “Get the show on tha road already!”

 

* * *

 

Charles thought it too egregious on the environment for them each to drive separately, so Erik rode with him and Alex went on his own as he’d be forced to pick up Scott from baseball practice in the afternoon.

Erik didn’t mind, even if Charles was quiet and distracted,  His brow twisted in that way that let Erik know he was deep in thought. Since he was most likely deep in thought regarding his sister, Erik didn’t ask for a running commentary. He felt as if he’d walked into a pond and just come to realize it was actually Lake Michigan. Normally, with his life running like a smooth, drama-free machine, he thought he’d be more than capable of taking on their dysfunctional in-fighting. But at the moment, body slowly falling apart, sleep schedule on red alert, and possibly on the cusp of getting fired, he just could not handle them.

He still hadn’t called Emma to tell her he wasn’t coming in, and couldn’t imagine doing so. He considered waiting until she called him in a rage, but then remembered she didn’t have his new number and didn’t have the energy to think beyond that. Whatever happened happened--he couldn’t muster any remaining dread to worry about that, and that was his own livelihood. Not surprising then that he was capable of such disinterest in stirring the pot of familial strife that was Charles and his sister. He knew that was more than half the reason he had told Raven to stay out of their hair today, just so he’d have less to deal with. He only hoped she’d continue to take his advice. With the way his life was going right now it seemed like a lot to hope for.

“It might not be related,” Charles burst out suddenly.

“What?” Erik grunted, wishing the radio were loud enough for him to feign deafness, but once again his luck was lacking.

“The mark on your back, and the bruises. I was thinking, it’s not definitive that they’re even related.” Charles blabbered on into Erik’s surprised silence. And he _was_ surprised. All the drama between him and his sister and the man was sitting there worrying about him? He felt warmed through with blushing affection. “I mean if you think about it...You had _some_ sort of trauma there, on your back there, you said so yourself after the stairwell, and the infrared photograph did show some sort of disturbance. Then, since you have anemia, it makes sense that the bruises just filled in that area of trauma _darker_ than the _general_ anemia bruises, you know?”

“Sure,” Erik nodded, patting the man’s arm. It was hard to remember that he didn’t actually have anemia, or hadn’t been technically informed that he did have anemia. It was probably good he lost track of that; he’d feel worse about lying to Charles if he always remembered he was lying. Anyway, it shouldn’t really be counted as lying since it most likely _was_ anemia.

“Late, late, late,” Charles sighed to himself, checking his watch. “How are we always late? I never used to be late...”

Erik was about to say something snarky, probably sultry, but cut himself off, choking on his own stilted breath. Their destination loomed in front of them, scruffy off-white building with a craggy moss-strewn roof. And suddenly Erik knew that this was exactly where he was supposed to be, knew it bone-deep until his entire body shook with the knowledge. His heartbeat thundered loud in his ears until it was all he could hear, a thumping heavy din, that he could _feel_ behind his eyes and in every limb.

“Erik? Erik!” Charles cried, sounding far away. The man grabbed him, was shaking his collar--his grip felt freezing and other-worldly. He jolted as the car came to a harsh stop, and scrabbled numbly for his seat belt. He needed to get out. There was something he had to do. He felt intensely there was something that he absolutely had to do, do or spontaneously combust, but _he just wasn’t sure what it was_.

“Erik, breathe, breathe!”

He squeezed his eyes shut, forced himself back under control, releasing his hold  on the door handle. He had to tighten his limbs to stop shaking, focusing on the sound of Charles’ voice until the ringing in his ears subsided.

“I’m okay,” he gasped, pulling at his collar. “I’m okay, just light-headed.”

“Oh my god, of course!” Charles growled, diving for something in the backseat. Erik leaned his head on the dashboard and tried to still his breathing, feeling as if he were yanking back on the leash of an overactive and massive hound. “I didn’t even think about breakfast. You must be starving! And in the state you were already in--I can’t believe I didn’t--such an idiot--”

Charles stuffed an Ensure into his one hand and a Pedialite into his other and prodded him anxiously to drink. But Erik knew for a fact that if he tried to force anything down there he was just going to vomit it right back up.

“Go, go,” he urged. “You’re late.”

“I can’t leave you out here!”

“It’s a parking lot, not the fucking DMZ, I’ll be fine. Just give me a minute to finish these and sit for a minute and I’ll be right in.”

Charles stared nervously between him and the entrance to the library, squirming. Alex was already standing there yelling at them for tardiness, a paroxysm of nerves and excitement.

“You have your phone on you?”

“I’ll call if I need you. Just make sure you answer this time.”

Charles kissed him, taking him by surprise, mouth cool and pliant against his.

“I promise,” the man whispered, and was gone with a last caress to his hair. “If you’re not in there in ten minutes I’m sending out the search party!”

Erik watched the two of them gab quickly, a rushed explanation, and then bound indoors. As soon as they were out of sight he ditched the nutrition drinks and bolted out of the car, accidentally closing the door on his jacket and grappling with it for a second before getting free.

Panting, chest aching with the suppressed urge to _do_ something, but he wasn’t sure what. He floundered towards the building, stumbling slightly, feeling like a divining rod--wandering until the mysterious pull lead him onwards.

 _Getting warmer...getting warmer..._ he sensed, struggling to breathe around the expansion in his chest, coughing on the uncomfortable feeling. He tripped through the shrubs around the building, yanking ivy from the wall--he couldn’t even feel them in his hands, shaking and numb.

Growling with frustration he shoved his way around the foundation, kicking the shrubs out of his way. _There--_ he choked on excitement, dropping down to his knees in the cool earth, pulling at the window there--to the basement.

But it was no use. Even with their lack of criminal tendencies in this podunk town, the community center had decided to take no chances. The window was barred. He yanked uselessly at it, rust coming away in his hands but that was all. _This wasn’t going to work._

He focused beyond the bars, and saw his reflection in the window. But he knew it wasn’t him.

 _“You know what you have to do,”_ his reflection said, and he could feel his own mouth moving. Standing, the rushed inside, wiping his hands, his burning, damp brow.

He knew what he had to do. He wasn’t sure the reason yet, the endgame, but he knew the first step.

 

* * *

 

Charles was practically purring, warming his hands around a steaming cup of actual English Breakfast tea, with actual cream and actual indecent amount of sugar, in a mug from the high school’s 1992 senior year. Mrs. Cross, running late to their tour of the Historical Room (an exaggerated term for their corkboard-lined dust trap), had made up for her tardiness with a well-stocked tea cart. Since Charles had been suffering through tea withdrawals the last few days, he was about catatonic with pleasure at this point.

“You’re purring like a cat.”

“Meow.”

Erik laughed, but couldn’t help but suggest “You better stop him before he knocks something over.”

“Hmm?” Charles hummed, blinking owlishly at him. Grinning, Erik couldn’t help but give him a languorous kiss before pointing out Alex, climbing up on a chair to get a photo of a framed picture of the Gone-Away House high up on the wall.

“Alex! Get down from there!” the man snapped, and just in the nick of time as Mrs. Cross bustled herself into the room, eyeing the blond as if he were playing with matches.

“No flash photography!” she snarled. But when she turned back to Charles she was all craggy smiles. At all of five-foot nothing, she was probably one of the few adults Charles had ever met that had to look up at him. She seemed to be trying to make up for her height by piling all of her deeply black hair on top of her head like Marie Antoinette. As she was undoubtedly over seventy, Erik was pretty damn sure this was a wig, and felt a very strong urge to tug on it.

“So sorry about that. Computer emergency. Darned machines. Pencils never broke down and prevented everyone from getting books, that’s all I’ll say about it.”

“No, no trouble at all!” Charles cheered back. “Thank you so much for being able to meet us on such short notice. You must be quite busy as the head librarian _and_ president of the Historical Society.”

“Luckily a little old two-room library like ours practically runs itself, when technology allows. Leaves me time to focus on the Historical Society, my true passion. It’s a bit of tradition for us actually: the original founder of the Historical Society was also the founder of the library--and a woman to boot! Quite a rarity in that day and age.”

“Is that so? That’s quite unique.”

“Absolutely, though it’s hard to know the exact circumstances surrounding it: this building has unfortunately been plagued with fires, so we’ve lost a lot of original documents. We’re very lucky to have tracked down what we have,” she motioned to the room around them, the framed letters and photographs spanning the walls.

“Fires?” Charles asked, looking up from his notebook.

“Oh yes, wooden buildings, you know. The library has gone through a number of fires since it was originally built.”

“That’s some bad luck!”

“Maybe it’s cursed,” Alex interjected. “Ya’ll should move closer to the fire department.”

“Oh no, we’ve always rebuilt on the same site. Also a bit of a tradition from our founder: two of the fires were on her watch and she always insisted on keeping to the original site. That’s probably how she got her name.”

“Her name?” Charles questioned.

“She’s known only as ‘Phoenix’. Her _real_ name is lost to history. Our historical society logo is based on her insignia actually.

“Her insignia?”

“A sort of drawing she used to sign her letters, what few survived. Very picturesque, but I can’t say I wouldn’t prefer to have an actual name.”

“Do you have any...”

Erik pointed it out on a framed letter on the wall with such a signature, easily recognisable from the Historical Society logo he’d been seeing all his life. “That.”

Charles followed his motion, and elbowed Alex to take a picture.

Mrs. Cross smiled at him, cloudy eyes shimmering. “You always showed a great interest in history. I’m surprised you never applied to the Society.” She turned her attention back to Charles conspiratorially. “Erik was always snooping around the artifacts, dreaming of his next big article, even as a child. He was going to be an investigative journalist you know, work for the Associated Press, travel the world. We once found him in the basement trying to dig for artifacts, or some such. Had to call his mother to come pick him up.”

Erik stared blankly. Though town gossip meant that everyone knew everything, he was amazed Mrs. Cross had such particular memories of him. He certainly didn’t remember digging around in the library basement--if he wasn’t coming here with his mother as a child he was coming here in high school to surreptitiously check out homoerotic literature he couldn’t peruse around his father or the kids at school.

“When was this?” he asked.

“Oh...you must have been in the first or second grade. We have the elementary students come out for the Shaw play every year.”

“That’s not possible,” Erik said, shaking his head. “I didn’t go to those. My mother kept me home.”

“Oh your dear mother,” Mrs. Cross sighed. “She tried, that first year. She so wanted you to have a normal childhood, to fit in. Her own father never let her attend the play. But of course after we found you in the basement, and you threw such a fit when we stopped your little excavation...well she wouldn’t risk it again.”

“I suppose I don’t remember,” he admitted.

“Typical,” sighed the librarian. “Boys never remember their most terrorsome deeds.”

“I take it he didn’t find anything to bequeath to the Society, then,” Charles teased.

“Didn’t do a thing but cause a mess. It’s all dirt down there in the basement; rebuild after rebuild, it’s about the only thing that’s original.”

“That has to have caused problems in amassing many historical documents. Has anything much survived from that age?”

“Just about everything in this room is newer, donated more recently from the Lovegoods or borrowed from the larger archive center in Paulsdale, the county seat. They store most of the census data, deeds, things of that nature. Dry, indeed, but interesting to a certain set. They’re kind enough to let us hold what we can in relation to the Gone-Away House since most visitors prefer a sort of one-stop-shop: visit the House and the Historical Room together.”

“Yes, quite,” Charles mumbled, scanning the walls again, nearly all of it devoted to the House. The truth was, there wasn’t much of interest in their sleepy town apart from that.

“If I may...can you perhaps tell me...Do you happen know if Governor Shaw had much of anything to do with the House?”

“Governor Shaw?” Mrs. Cross seemed genuinely surprised.

“He was governor around the time the House was built, isn’t that correct?”

“Well yes, but I can’t see what that has to do... This was a small farming house on the _very_ outskirts of town. To imagine that a man as important at Governor Shaw had anything to do with a place so very unimportant--at the time, I mean...”

“Of course,” Charles said, frowning.

“What would make you think...?”

“Nothing, nothing,” Charles waved the thought away, still looking pensive.

“If it’s Governor Shaw you’re interested in, we do have...” Mrs. Cross began, sounding quite proud. She waited until she had Charles’ complete attention before continuing on with a coy grin. “We do have one special document, the apple of our eye if you will.”

“Which is?” Charles asked eagerly, glancing around the walls trying to scope it out. Mrs. Cross laughed.

“Oh, no, it’s not out here. It’s much too precious for that. Come with me, I’ll show you.”

Charles gripped Erik’s arm as they were lead out together, beaming excitedly. It was impossible for Erik to match his enthusiasm, feeling on the verge of vomiting as he was. Alex made up for his frigidity, nearly whooping as he bounded from the room.

“We have it scanned, but I’m afraid computers don’t get along with me,” the librarian explained, squinting at a crowded ring of keys from her pocket.

Erik could barely hear her.

There, at the end of the hall, was a door, plain, nondescript, but calling to him.

He knew what he had to do.

“Erik,” Charles hissed, pulling on him. They were going into the room-- _the wrong room._

Shaking the thoughts from his head, he followed the group inside, tripping with shock as the door shut behind him. There was a heavy metal door and a metal table reflecting fluorescents in the center of the room. He was blinded by the sheen for a moment, fell back--metal table under his shoulders, cold on his bare skin, metal on metal tapping, a baby crying.

“Erik,” Charles murmured to him, as he saw he had fallen back against the wall. “Are you alright?”

“Fine,” he quaked, struggling to still his shaking hands.

“Here it is,” Mrs. Cross said, pulling lock box from a safe under the desk. From there she produced a heavy document folder. Laying it on the table she carefully removed a weathered sheet of parchment, creased and weathered but enclosed lovingly in plastic. It seemed they were all holding their breaths as they approached, hovering around the papers and staring.

Over Charles’ shoulder he could see the writing, dark and strong, almost cut into the parchment, incredibly easy to read. He had been expecting something more antiquated--thin and spidery, ghostly. Instead everything from the handwriting to the press on paper spoke of someone incredibly virile, even charismatic. Erik hated it on sight.

“Dearest Max,” Charles murmured under his breath as he read, and Erik followed along quickly.

_I hate to think of you away in Chicago. I know soon you shall understand that what I did I did to make you a better man, to try to make you a better man. You were not ready for it then but as you grow I do hope you shall grow to the man I know you can be. You are a strong boy, Max, undermined by those who would hold you back and I have done much, sacrificed much, to free you from that. I saddens me not you have you at your rightful place at my side. Come back to me, Max, and let me continue your glorious education, and make you all you could be. Do not waste such potential out of fear or misplaced loyalty._

The letter went on, but Erik couldn’t stand to read it, was seeing absolute red--that bastard--that complete _bastard_. He snatched forward to rip the paper to pieces, to burn the scraps, only stopped when Charles’ staying hand clasped over his, his bright blue eyes boring into him with surprise and alarm.

“Erik,” he hissed quietly, pushing him back away from the table, away from the letter. He realized no one else had noticed his lunge. “What the hell are you doing?”

Erik could only stare back, shake his head slightly. What the hell had he been doing?

“Mrs. Cross, um, was...was Governor Shaw...gay?”

Both Erik and Charles were distracted from their own issue in order to gape at Alex.

“Decidedly not, Mr. Summers,” Mrs. Cross growled. Charles tugged on his hand and they returned to the table but Charles didn’t release him--didn’t trust him not to make another try of it? Probably a good idea. Mrs. Cross continued. “We’re not entirely sure who this Max is, but we have a couple of adequate guesses. Obviously the letter makes it sound as if he was rather young. He apparently moved to Chicago before this letter. We’re thinking he was some sort of relation--maybe a ward.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Erik growled but he hadn’t done it very loudly and Mrs. Cross continued almost as if she hadn’t heard.

“We do have...let’s see if I can find it...” the woman waddled to a nearby file cabinet and scrounged around, coming back with a stack of folders. “We keep some overflow documents down here--obviously not everything we have is on display upstairs. Here, let’s see...” she mumbled, searching through them. “These are some guardianship applications--There’s one child we were looking at that looked very promising. Here we go.” She held out a sheet, Erik’s blood going cold on sight.

“This,” she explained. “Is a contract of guardianship signed by a Judith Eisenhardt; as you can see her address is in Chicago. It would be about the right time-frame, and her nephew, Max Eisenhardt, was only 14 at the time; it makes a pretty clean fit with the spirit of the letter.”

The woman stopped suddenly, pulling back, staring at Erik. He knew she was thinking the same thing he was, and he was right.

“Same as your grandfather.”

“What?” Charles murmured, eyes turned on him so huge and blue.

“My mother’s father. His name was Max Eisenhardt as well.”

“Whuzzat mean?” Alex questioned, gawping.

Charles was frowning, staring at the letter pensively. “I’m not sure.”


	57. Chapter 57

Erik stood apart, skin itching, as the others continued to fawn over the letter, conjecturing on handwriting and personality. Hot under the collar, Erik couldn’t wait to get out of there. Waste of time. He had better things to do. _He had things to do. He had important things to do. He had to get out of here. Time to get out of here._

“Do you have any idea how Mr. Eisenhardt’s parents died?” Charles questioned.

“Beg your pardon?”

“I mean, you said he was an orphan, was adopted by an aunt. Is there any record of how his parents died?”

“Oh, I don’t know off the top of my head. We have some documents on our electronic records systems upstairs. We could have a look there.”

“Excellent, let’s go,” Erik cheered, pushing everyone towards the door.

Charles glared at him, but didn’t fight it, allowing himself to be maneuvered out the door.

Erik didn’t even make it up the stairs though. It felt as if his legs had turned to lead, had been glued to the floor.

His heart pattered anxiously, but stilled again as his eyes caught on his goal.

“What’s down there?” he questioned, pointing at the door at the end of the hall. But he already knew.

“That?” Mrs. Cross said, squinting. “That’s the basement.”

Despite the inconsequence of the words, Erik couldn’t help the shiver of thrill, stayed concreted in place as the rest returned to the stairs. Charles was the first to notice his reticence, and held up the group again.

“Do you want to go in?” he laughed.

“Nothing down there but a bunch of dirt and old furniture,” said Mrs. Cross.

Still, Erik’s couldn’t force his legs to follow them.

“I don’t mind a little detour, if it’s alright with you,” Charles said to Mrs. Cross, all charm. “It would be a bit fascinating to see the location of baby Erik’s mischievous excavations. Perhaps we’ll find his long lost treasure.”

Smiling, thoroughly won over, Mrs. Cross fished around in her heavy skirts for her keys. Erik watched, twisting in place with anticipation, as she unlocked the door; a simple pin and tumbler lock, it would be a breeze to pick. His fingers tingled with the urge to go for his lock picking kit in his satchel, and he had to remind himself it was unnecessary.

“Watch your step,” Mrs. Cross warned, flipping a heavy switchboard of industrial lights that flooded the place with stuttering fluorescents. The stairs were a squeaking wooden affair that rocked under Mrs. Cross’ weight. Alex bounded down at a sprint and Cross followed him like a security guard sighting a well-known shoplifter. There was a lot of flammable stuff down here and Alex’s reputation preceded him.

The basement was dusty and dry, filled with old furniture from the fifties and sixties: cracked lime green leather chairs, a desk that was missing a leg, a filing cabinet with a big dent in one aluminum siding. The space was surprisingly small, smaller than the community center itself, but with the tall dusty shelves and upended couches it was still possible to get away from the others.

The walls were just big grey bricks of concrete, but the floor was indeed nothing more than loamy earth, billowing up under Erik’s heels.

“Have you ever thought of putting flooring in?” Charles questioned, drifting away to catch up to Mrs. Cross (who still wasn’t letting Alex out of her sight as the boy spun an outdated globe on the far corner of the room).

Erik didn’t pay attention to the answer, turning instead around the corner of the staircase. The expanse under the stairs was full of moldy-smelling boxes, old brooms pushed up against the wall, but Erik managed to maneuver by them, examining the wall before exiting to the other half of the room. Nothing there.

He found a door, ill-fitting in the concrete wall, and his hands shook as he forced it open. Inside was mostly gardening tools: hedge clippers, a push mower. Looking up he realized he was still under the library. On the other side of cupboard was a sort of ramp leading up to a cellar door.

There was nothing there. He shut the door disappointedly, catching something for the corner of his eye as he did so, like a flicker of a flame.

He clipped his elbow on the banister of the stairs, stopping to curse.

“ _Erik_ ,” someone said, but it wasn’t Charles--was hardly more than a whisper--he whipped around, skin prickling with sweat, spine itching, muscles tight with nerves. No one--dingy gray aluminum shelf pushed up in the corner behind the stairs, plastic crates, decaying cardboard boxes.

He grabbed the closest box and tossed it to the ground, folding it open. It was full of old copies of National Geographic and he pushed the brunt of it away in disgust, standing again. This wasn’t it. This wasn’t what he was looking for--what was he looking for? He kicked the box away, approaching close enough to examine the other boxes on the shelf, but nothing jumped out at him so he tested the shelf instead. It squeaked loudly as he pulled it away from the wall, hitting the stack of chairs that hemmed it in, and wobbling. He pushed it back immediately, but not silently. He heard the chitchat at the end of the room suddenly stop.

“Erik?” Charles called out anxiously.

His heart was hammering--he needed a little more time, just a little. He pressed his toe into the bottom edge of the bookcase to help push it flush against the wall--that was it! Breath speeding with excitement, he scuffed his foot into the loamy earth, getting down only a couple of hard-packed inches before he hit something much harder than dirt.

“Erik,” --the hiss again--this time coupled with a touch to his arm and he jumped away, choking on a yelp, shuddering the metal bookcase as he crashed against it.

“Erik!” Charles cried, catching him where he fell back from the case, wide-eyed with surprised.

“Sorry,” he coughed, turning away again and kicking back into the ground, revealing a corner edge of stone buried there.

“What are you doing back here?” Charles questioned, eyeing the damp box of magazines.

Before he could answer, Mrs. Cross was calling out.

“Are you boys done here?” she cried. “I’m afraid all this dust isn’t good for my allergies.”

“Coming,” Charles replied, turning and dragging Erik along with him.

He had to get back here. Somehow, without Mrs. Cross or Charles getting in his way, he had to get back here.

* * *

 

Leaving was almost unbearable. It felt as if his skin were a sweater caught on a snag and every step farther away dragged out another skein of him. By time they made it upstairs, Erik was shaking, chest aching. He pulled Charles back while the other two continued on, deep in conversation about why Mrs. Cross didn’t trust Alex even though that fire was ages ago and anyway he was helping Misser Charles now and didn’t she know he would never dare abuse that trust?

“Keep her busy,” he hissed into Charles’ ear.

“What?” Charles jolted to ask, staring up at him worriedly.

“Get rid of her for a bit. At the computer, documents, whatever. Please.”

Charles stopped dead in his tracks, frowning dangerously.

“Erik, what’s going on?”

“Just trust me, okay?” he begged.

Charles stared back, and Erik could see the dichotomy of his eyes, teetering on the highwire between two options. Trust him or distrust him. And he realized how ridiculous it was of him to expect Charles to sway his way. This was the man who couldn’t even trust him enough to date him after hours of hard-nosed debating--how could he trust him with absolutely no arguments, no time to give him arguments?

The man turned away from him, and Erik badly wanted to reach out, touch him, convince him by osmosis, but the moment was gone.

“Mrs. Cross, do you think you might walk me through how to use that electronic database? Erik and Alex are going to step out for a moment.”

Erik realized the man was sending Alex with him to keep an eye on him and bristled. But he was asking the brunet for a lot, to trust without evidence; he had no choice but to let it go. Alex was less willing.

“I want to go with _you_ ,” the blonde complained.

“I need you to help Erik, Alex. It’s important.”

That was all that was necessary. he gave the camera back to Charles and awaited orders. How easy would it be to get rid of the kid? He couldn’t just tell him to wait in the car--let off the leash the boy was all too likely to roam back to his original order and tip Charles off.

“Oh, yes, all right,” Mrs. Cross said, looking the three of them over. “You two know the way to the library if you finish up soon. Come along, Mr. Xavier.”

Charles shot him a glance before following, and Erik didn’t think he was imagining the way it seemed to say _This better be good._

* * *

 

Released from social niceties, Erik fled back to the basement door like a rubber band snapped back from aching tension.

“You keep an eye out,” Erik hissed, glancing around as he took a knee outside the basement door, removing his lock picking kit from his satchel.

“What the hell you think yer doing?!” Alex hissed right back, shaking his shoulder dissuasively and nearly knocking him off his knee. He shrugged the boy off him, grabbing his wrist, saying the only thing to get the brat to go along with it.

“It’s for Charles!”

Alex settled right down.

“Can I help?” the boy pleaded, kneeling along with him, watching Erik slip in the wrench.

“Yeah, make sure no one catches me doing this,’ he grumbled, careful not to apply pressure, slipping the pick in as far as it would go and gently raking it forward, smiling at the familiar feel of the first pin binding. He gave Alex a serious glance and the boy sighed, standing, watching the halls. Luckily, this seemed to be an ill-used part of the community center. No one came by to interrupt or stop them. He slipped back, raked again, one more time, twisting the wrench slightly when it would let him, and with a sudden _click_ the lock gave way.

“Awesome!” Alex cheered. “You’ve got to teach me how to do that!”

“Fuck off,” he growled back. As the boy tried to lunge his way through the door first, Erik pinned him to the door jamb. “Do you have a crowbar?”

“What?” Alex gawked.

“Do. You have. A crowbar?”

“Um, in my car, maybe...”

“Go get it,” Erik demanded. “Do not come back without one.”

Alex stared back nervously, glancing down the dark stairwell.

“Charles wants me to help with this?”

To get his attention back, Erik gripped the kid hard by his shoulder. “Yes.”

Reticently, Alex nodded, slunk away. He maybe didn’t trust Erik, but he apparently wasn’t confident enough in his distrust to do anything drastic about it.

He stood in the empty stairwell, the cool air from below wafting up to him, soothing the burning heat of him, the sweat prickling his throat, the tickle between his shoulder blades. He was doing it. It was time.

Carefully, holding his breath, Erik stepped down the rickety, trembling stairs.

The shelf was in the corner, edges gleaming in the harsh lighting. The corner of stone revealed from earlier was still there, peeking out from the barest edge of the shelf. This time there was no one to say anything when he yanked it away from the wall with a screaming squeak of metal. The shelf only moved a couple of inches before hitting furniture. It required shifting, hot menial labor. It couldn’t have been long, not with his impatient pace, but it felt like an hour before, sweating and panting, he was able to get the shelf pulled out far enough to possibly squeeze behind it.

He got a single leg in before Alex was tripping down the stairs, skidding down on his ass and shouting with surprise and pain. The crowbar slipped free of his grasp and clanged down on its own, racketing about till Erik was sure the entire library would be down about their heads.

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” he hissed, running over and yanking the boy up off the stairs.

“You’re fuckin’ welcome,” Alex huffed back, straightening his clothes.

Erik grabbed the crowbar; back to work. No time for distractions. “Come here, help me with this shelf.”

“You’re filthy,” the kid balked at him, but followed nevertheless, which was all Erik required.

Alex held the shelf pulled back as far as it could go while Erik climbed back behind it, squeezing himself into the narrow confines.

“What are you doing?” Alex questioned.

Not answering, Erik kicked the loamy earth aside, heart bursting in his chest as the stone was slowly revealed. Thick, heavy-looking, a pale square of promise.

Arms tingling, Erik raised the crowbar, but Alex stopped him.

“Wait! You have to take a picture! Documentation!”

“With what? You gave Charles the camera.”

Glaring, Alex took out his phone.

“Are you done yet? Can I go now?” Alex frowned at him, taking a few more pictures before letting him continue.

He took a deep breath, struggling to fill his lungs, putting the edge of the crowbar to the line of the rock, a few inches from the wall. Straining his weight into it, he leaned and pulled, but there was little room to lean here and the rock only groaned and stuttered forward a few centimeters.

“That all you got?” the boy mocked.

“It’s fucking heavy,” he growled. Setting a foot against the wall to help him, he was finally able to shove the rock up and lever it completely out of the way.

Heart in his throat, throbbing painfully there, he struggled to stay upright. Overheated from all this exertion, he felt on the verge of fainting. But an indominatable will kept him steady, able to focus, double vision shifting back to single long enough to see what he had unearthed.  

“It’s full of...gravel,” said Alex.

 


	58. Chapter 58

Erik hardly felt the cold earth beneath his knees as dropped down, digging through the loose gravel.

“Stop, stop!” Alex yelped. He did his best to push Erik away, but was still holding the shelf away from the wall, so that he ended up pushing at Erik with his foot, horrifically dirtying his shirt.

“What?!” he snarled viciously.

“Ya have ta take photos!”

“I’m not stopping you,” Erik huffed, and continued pulling out handfuls of loose gravel.

“Quit it! Yer doin’ it all wrong!” Alex howled. Letting loose of the shelf, he jumped back in the crevasse with Erik, now pinned snugly between the wall and the shelf, knocking boxes to the ground with a ruckus.

Alex held his phone with one hand and shoved the other into Erik’s chest to keep him safely away. He yanked his hand away immediately, though, as if burned.

“What was that?!”

“What was what?”

“That! Yerr chest...it...it moved!”

“It’s called a fucking heartbeat, something you won’t have much longer if you don’t hurry the fuck up.”

Gritting his teeth, Alex took a couple dim photos and then began to slowly and carefully sweep the gravel away, seemingly one piece at a time.

“You have _got_ to be kidding me. Dig faster!”

“Don’t get yer panties in a twist. What are we even diggin’ for?” the boy grumbled, but only barely upped his pace.

Erik didn’t know, he just knew it was important. Too important to go at this glacial pace. But just as he reached out, Alex stilled ominously, as if he’d just noticed a snake inches from his hand.

The boy looked up at him through sweaty bangs, eyes wide with trembling excitement. “I hit something!”

“Are you sure?” he panted back. Alex just dug all the more concertedly, pushing Erik’s hands out of the way. He watched numbly as the boy revealed a dusty disk of metal in the ground.

“Dr. B. East,” the boy whispered, fingering the name etched into the metal. Even under the thin layer of dirt clinging to it, the metal looked new: it had a high luster that shone even under the dust, as if fresh off some assembly line. A lot different than the rusty iron door and grate cover at the Gone Away House, needless to say.

“It keeps going,” Erik pointed out.

“How far?” Alex muttered, but he continued digging (slowly), revealing more metal sinking down into the earth. “How are we going to get it out?”

Erik’s finger were itching, veins burning with anticipation. He didn’t wait for Alex to take more photos or continue his glacial excavation. Jumping forward, over Alex’s loud complaints and persistent hands, he started sweeping out handfuls of gravel like an avid dog.

“Aw, fuck it,” Alex huffed, and started helping him.

“Look at this.” He could see a groove in the cylinder, felt the catch in the smooth metal.

“It’s some kind of seam,” Alex panted.

“I’m going to hook the crowbar into the groove, you grab it where you can and help me pull it up,” said Erik, wiggling the crowbar through the dirt and struggling to catch it exactly in the seam. “Okay, one, two, _three_.”

They pulled hard, holding their breath, Alex’s grip slipping just before Erik’s did, crowbar scraping with a shriek against the metal and banging into the shelf. Although Alex nearly pissed himself, their slip-up had not left a mark on the metal.

“That’s damned lucky. Charles would have our hides if we busted this thing up.”

“Shut up and let’s try again.”

“It moved a little,” Alex added, renewing his grip.

“Ready?” He dug the crowbar in again.

“One, two, three!” They grit their teeth, Alex digging his fingertips into the metal groove and yanking. The canister gave a grating inch and then slipped free, the force of the sudden release dropping Erik against the wall with a thud. Throwing out a hand to catch himself against the shelf, he tumbled boxes everywhere.

“Fuck!” he cried, and then stifled his expletives as much as he could as they distinctly heard the door upstairs opening and someone jogging down.

Alex stared wildly, pushed the canister to him and disappeared. Erik barely stifled his yelp when the blonde shoved the bookcase back against the wall, crushing him. Especially when the stone that had covered the hole fell against his shins, nearly rebreaking his leg by the feel of it.

“Alex!” someone hissed, and Erik realized it was Charles. “How did you get _in_ here? Where’s Erik?”

“Let me the fuck out of here!” he took the opportunity to growl, rattling the metal frame pressing him into the wall and threatening to up-end more boxes, glaring at the both of them through the gaps.

“Alex, what did you do?!” Charles gasped, running forward and easing the bookcase away from him again. “How did you get back there?”

Erik crawled out from behind the case, holding the canister carefully against his chest. It was cool, almost cold, and felt like a balm against Erik’s overheated skin.

“Look what we found, Mr. Xavier!” Alex cheered. Erik was reminded of a puppy when his owner first gets home, the boy jouncing from foot to foot around toppled boxes, just about wiggling with excitement.

“You’re filthy,” Charles disparaged, brushing at Erik’s clothes but looking straight into his eyes anxiously. “Are you alright?”

He gulped, nodded, and presented the miracle of his fact-finding mission, holding the canister out to the man with both hands. He did so wordlessly because there were no words. The metal gleamed blue-silver where his grip had wiped dust from it.

“Where did you find this?” Charles questioned, blinking at the long vessel but not taking it yet.

“It was buried, Mr. Xavier! Right where you thought it’d be!”

The brunet’s eyebrows jumped and he glanced up again at Erik.

“Where _I_ thought it’d be?”

“Well, you sent us down here, dinnit you?”

“How did you know we were down here?” Erik questioned.

“Your satchel was by the door,” Charles said distractedly, handing it over. This exchange seemed to shake him from his reveries. He took the canister at last, making Erik’s hands ache without it. “We can’t stay here. Mrs. Cross thinks I’m in the loo. Let’s get a soil sample and tidy this room back up. Where did all this gravel come from?”

* * *

 

Charles turned off the radio the moment it came on, engine revving to life.

“How did you know that thing was down there?” the man demanded.

“What?” he balked, glancing at the cannister in the backseat.

“How did you know?”

“I--I didn’t! I didn’t know...” Charles wasn’t going to buy that. He would keep digging and digging, asking questions he couldn’t answer.

“Was it from when you were a kid? Mrs. Cross said you’d been down there before--is that why you wanted to go down there?”

“I didn’t--you’re the one that had us go down there in the first place.”

“Because you were staring at it like an addict!”

“I didn’t know anything was down there, Charles. I...I--we just went down there and I --felt something.”

“Felt something?”

No, that sounded wrong. For someone so ingrained in the occult Charles would never let him get away with that. “Just--the stone. There was a stone covering the urn and I hit it--I just accidentally hit it--stubbed my toe on it, that’s all.”

“Urn?”

“What?”

“Why did you call it an urn?”

“Not urn. Or whatever. Whatever it is.” He glanced into the back seat again. His hands itched and he found himself reaching back for it, pulling it up front with him. He stroked the remaining dust off it, admiring the gunmetal gleam in the weak sunlight. It did look like an urn, now that he thought of it. No longer than a foot, tapered on both ends, bulged at the seal--not in the center but closer to the top.

_Dr. B. East_ was etched in the top but he didn’t recognize the name. He turned it over. On the bottom was a circular inlay, a different metal, like a burnt copper. It portrayed a relief of a phoenix in flight.  

“Erik.” Charles touched his shoulder gently. “Did you hear me?”

“What?”

Charles frowned at him, eyes that calculating blue, wheels turning.

“I’m going to ask the team to come back.”

“The team?”

“Darwin and the boys. There’s nothing in Maine, it’s a bust. Meanwhile this thing keeps snowballing. I feel like I’ve unearthed a metacarpal and am slowly figuring out it’s attached to a tyrannosaurus. I need help.”

“You’ve got help! Me, Alex...”

“No offense but you two are not exactly interchangeable with a professional crew that’s been studying phenomena and working together for years...”

“Thanks for that.”

“Yes I’m sure you’re very surprised to hear that,” the man replied with a roll of the eyes. He became serious again quickly, though. “I need them. I need their expertise, their support. We keep wading into this thing waiting to reach the bottom but I feel like we’re up to our necks now and there’s still no end in sight. I can’t...I promised you I’m going to figure this out, and I am, but I don’t think I can do it on my own anymore. That’s all. It doesn’t...It doesn’t mean anything else, understand?”

But Erik couldn’t think about what else it could mean, his mind was already racing. “When are they getting here?”

“I’m not sure. Sometime tomorrow, probably.”

Erik thought quickly. Not much time, _not much time left to him_.

He shook his head like a dog trying to shake water from its ear. What was he thinking? Time left for what?

But of course he quickly realized, looking at Charles with miserly shock. As soon as Darwin got back this would all be over. It was all going to come crashing down. Whatever berth he’d worked out for himself in Charles’ heart, he couldn’t trust it would still be there when Darwin and real life crashed back in. Charles was distrustful of his intentions enough without someone actively gunning against him whispering in the brunet’s ear.

And it wasn’t just that. Charles looked at him, at his increasingly bizarre medical issues, these bruises, and felt pity, wanted to fatten him up and take his temperature. Darwin would see it for what it was: suspicious. Suspiciously timed and suspiciously ominous. Erik himself didn’t even know what the bruises meant, but looked at through Darwin’s eyes he felt his own sense of distrust and trepidation heighten. What were they? What was happening to him? What were the chances it was unrelated to what had happened to him at the House?

But these thoughts slipped away like an eel in a weak grip. Like a grip that had purposefully weakened.

He looked at his hands on the metal, at the bruises peeking out from his cuffs and the dark mottled blue of his veins.

He was running out of time.

“Erik?”

Blinking out of his reverie he realized they were back at the motel without him ever having noticed the drive.

“I’m ready.”

But Charles stopped him before he could get out of the car. Looking back the man was fidgeting with his lip, scraping his teeth across the dark red making Erik want nothing so much as to take him by the chin and kiss him to get him to stop it already.

“There’s something else...” Charles began before Erik could act on his impulse. “I wanted to...I wanted to tell you first, before Alex...”

“What is it?”

“Mrs. Cross was able to find something on Max Eisenhardt, on his parents...”

His skin itched, as if the space between his muscles and his skin had been filled with sand.

“Well?”

“It was a sort of death certificate, ledger of some sort--very curtailed, you understand. But it did list cause of death as...as fire.”

His chest burned, the bubbling of magma, but it didn’t reach his mind.

“And you think...”

“I don’t know,” Charles huffed, shaking his head hard. “I don’t know what it means. But with the burnt man and the scorching, a fire would make sense.”

“But there’s never been a fire at the Gone-Away House--I told you--”

“I know, I know,” Charles growled. “Oldest wooden building and all that bollocks. I’m just saying _it makes sense._ There’s something here we’re not catching...”

“I take it that’s going on the top of your list for when Darwin gets here?”

“No,” Charles pouted. “It’s going on the top of my list _now._ ”

 

 


End file.
